Going to the mountains!

This afternoon I am heading off to the Blue Mountains for a weekend of climbing and hanging out with some great old friends of mine, Katarina & Elmar. Hopefully I will run into some other old mates too as its been some time since I saw alot of the guys from up there.

Looking forward to clipping a few bolts too... lets see if the last few weeks of endurance training has worked at all... Watch this space! :)

Boulders, Bolts & Backflips

So yet again I have left it a few weeks between posts, I really need to write more regularly! (Sorry Richo!)

Alot has gone on in the last few weeks so here is a bit of an overview...

A bit of mid week bouldering saw Rusty and Richo both send 'Stopping All Stations' v8/9 at Cantaloupe Hill, awesome stuff!
Then later that week on another afternoon and on his birthday no less Danny sent our v7 variant to 'The Joker' as well as 'Spruce Moose' sit start v9! Happy friggin birthday champ!

I didn't get out there on that Thursday as I went to see Cirque Du Soliel's 'Dralion'... and it was absolutely fantastic, such a great show... made me want to crack out the circus toys the minute I got home haha! If you can get along to see it I highly recommend it... awesome costumes, awesome music and amazing feats of gymnastic strength and precision... really inspiring!

The weekend saw a big crew of us head out to Hollywood to climb some routes. Yeah you heard me right... we were tieing in!
9 of us swarmed in on the little crag on saturday hanging draws on nearly every route, people climbing all over the place. It was a great day... perfect weather, good conditions, great people.. you couldn't ask for more!
We all did a whole host of the moderate routes with the highlight ticks of the day being Rusty sending the unnamed 27 at the left end of the crag and Josh and Richo sending 'Brokenwood Cricket Pitch' 25.
All in all an awesome day!

Here are a few of Rusty's pics from his Flicker page, I will post some of my own asap!

Enjoy :)

Mel on 'Chilled Right Eyeball' 17

Me on 'Chilled Left Eyeball' 20

Me cutting loose on the unnamed 27 that Rusty sent

Stu on 'Flat Head' 21


Richo taking a clip on 'Right Here Right Now' 25

More sends and summer weather

Summer is well and truely on it's way in these parts. The weather is warming up and the days are getting longer and longer.

But despite the increasing heat things are still getting sent.

Daniel Da Silva visited again managing to send 'Vendetta' v7, the new variant to 'The Joker' which is about v7 also, and a mighty effort to send the fantastic 'Spruce Moose' v9. An awesome day, props to you man!

Below are some long promised pics of mine from the last few weeks. Enjoy!

Daniel on the unnamed V7 at The Hill, North Black

Light, Camera, Action! Tor on 'Vendetta' V7, Cantaloupe Hill, Corin Dam Road

That crazy Nord, Simen, on the v3 slab at Georges Boulder, Corin Dam Road

The Hill, North Black

Tag my fist... shikading

Focus... Tor on a v4, The Hill, North Black

And rock over... Ian on a v4, The Hill, North Black

Daniel giving curry to the crux of 'Spruce Moose' v9, Cantaloupe Hill, Corin Dam Road

It's T-Shirt Weather...

Or lazing by a pool with a cocktail weather... god I love summer :)
The weather has been warming up alot the last few weeks and while it isn't great for bouldering it is great weather for barbeques, beer, sunbaking, swimming and general summertime shenanigans... So bring on the sunshine I say!
Temps have been cool in the evenings though and tuesday night saw us head out for a boulder along Corin Road. We all did the Joker a few times and worked on various projects we have there.
I jumped on 'Cerebro' v11 for the first time and suprised myself by doing reasonably well, there were only two moves I didn't do and I think with some work they should go. Will be a long time before I would be strong enough to link it all but I am happy to have such a great hard problem to project only 15 minutes from home :)
Dan Da Silva is back down for the day tomorrow to try the 'Spruce Moose' sit start again so I'll be back asap with news on how tomorrow goes for all the crew!
Over and out!

Loooooong weekend

So the long weekend has come and gone and the weather was not all that flash for bouldering due to a fair bit of rain so we took it as an excuse to chill out and have some shenanigans.

Without getting into too much detail it was a pretty loose weekend all round with two nights in a row of shenanigans involving lots of beers/bourbon/wine/champagne/long island ice teas/pipes/god knows what else, highball slabs at Georges boulder drunk and in the rain, 7 people roaring drunk and rolling around in the back of a van all round town, a spa, moderate levels of nudity, table dancing, air guitar, the first ascent of the Durham Hotel back bar traverse and me passing out and getting obscenities drawn all over me with permanent marker hahaha

Good times!!! :-)

Some pics from Rusty

Hi all,

Seeing as I am a bit behind with editing and posting my own pics I thought I would post some from Rusty's Flickr page.

Also, check out pics from Tor Vikan Rise and Ben Shaw on their Flickr pages, links are in the list to the right of this page.

In addition, if you have pics you would like to share, particularly of climbing around Canberra, but anywhere in Oz or abroad is fine! Just send me a link to your Flickr, or wherever you keep them online, or email them to me (dunkcranks at hotmail dot com) and I can post up links and pic... always keen for pics of our local blocs in particular :)

Enjoy these ones from Rusty! (I promise some new ones from me are coming soon haha)

Castle Hill, NZ, in miniature

The Carillon, Lake Burley Griffin, ACT

A pic from the recent World Cup at Mt Stromlo, ACT

Me on my accidental variant to JSOW at Baghdad, North Black

Action packed!

So the last week or so has been as action packed as it can get!

The weekend saw a crew head down from the central coast to enjoy some granite treats and enjoy it they did.
I took Daniel Da Silva, Katie, Tor Vikan Rise and Simen out to Corin Road on saturday where everyone sent stuff all day long. Starting at Georges boulder everyone did the nice high slab (Simen took the fall of the season with a spectacular 540 rotation and flat on his face landing haha) as well as Tor and Daniel nabbing quick sends of 'Phone Sex' v8.
We then headed up to Cantaloupe Hill where Tor and Daniel sent 'The Joker' v6 and Daniel sent 'Blood Makes Noise' and 'O'ren Ishi' both v7.
I also jumped back onto 'Scream' v8, and after a few pink shirt earning back offs and half assed attempts I finally committed and gave my all to the final highball dyno and bagged the problem, possibly the best feeling ever, sooooo stoked!
I should note that Simen jumped onto the top section of this (sans the 'Blood Makes Noise' initial boudler problem) and FLASHED the highball dyno and mantle! We all just stood there dumbfounded! Amazing!

After some fun drinks and a barbeque on saturday night, Sunday saw us head out to North Black. Noone felt overly strong or had much skin so mainly some easy problems at the Campground and The Hill went down with Daniel doing the little v7 roof as a highlight of the day.

Awesome weekend all round :)

Tuesday night we headed out for an evening session at North Black where Danny sent 'G-Force' v8 at the asteroid and Richo did the v7 varient he hadn't done yet, then they headed back to the main area where Richo sent the tough as nails 'Sunday Gardener' v8 (hard v8 at that) - top stuff man... shikading!

This weekend is a long weekend so if the rain holds off hopefully I will have some more good news of great send to pass on soon!

Ps: I will try and get some more pics up again soon :)

I'd like to be, under the sea...

Well, under a pool anyway...
Last night I strated a beginners course for Underwater Hockey, and what a blast it was!
Such a fun game, and possibly the hardest game I have ever played. I spent a good portion of the game we played swallowing water and drowning due to my apparent lack of snorkelling skills haha
If you haven't seen Underwater Hockey before look it up on Youtube, there are plenty of vids.

Good times :)

50 in 1 - and other random adventures

Hi all,

Last week being my first week back after being sick and with me not feeling back to 100% strength I decided to try something different this weekend so I recruited some companions and headed to North Black on saturday to try and see if we could climb 50 boulder problems at North Black in one day.
Dave Pearson, Ben Fisher and I started out at 9:30am at The Hill with the only real rule being that at least one of the 50 problems had to be done at each of the 8 main areas (The Hill, The Campground, Upper Campground, Dog Rock, The Asteroid, The Hinterland, Baghdad & Frost Hollow).
Ben unfortunately had to leave when he reached 28 problems but Dave and I managed to soldier on to complete the mission, finishhing with the classic 'Sisyphus' v2 at Frost Hollow. We managed to climb 50 problems of varying difficulty (and quality) up to v7 and climb problems at all the main areas of North Black.
It was a hard little mission but one well worth trying. I think this is likely a record for the area, if you or anyone you know has done similar or better I would be interested to hear about it for sure!

In other news of the day Danny sent the crimpy 'Sunday Gardener' v8 - awesome work man!

Sunday saw us head out to check out the new bouldering at Link Road, potential everywhere! Can't wait to get out and establish more stuff out there!

Well, thats about it, I'll be back soon enough with more news I hope! :)

Another weekend gone...

Well this weekend was a quiet one for me on the climbing front, I didn't head out at all due to still not feeling so great, but today I feel fine so I think its back to it this week.

Richo and Russell did head out to Corin Dam Road on Saturday though and both of them sent 'Phone Sex' v8 at Georges boulder and Richo also sent 'Blood Makes Noise' v7 up on Cantaloupe Hill, awesome stuff!

Last Thursday I headed to the Zoo to take pics, here are a few of my favourites, enjoy!

Iguana

Red Panda



Emu

Tiger

Otter

Baby Alligators

I know its been a while between blogs (sorry Richo) but I haven't been all that well lately so I sort of have an excuse.
Last weekend saw us out at North Black again where Richo sent the unnamed v9 at The Hill for his first at the grade.. farkin awesome work man - Sherralang! haha
Russell also managed a repeat of 'Sunday Gardener', great stuff man.
We had another night session out at North Black last night too, Danny got close to the V9 at The Hill and I'm sure he will send soon, I worked on my other new line project there too making some great progress and should get it soon enough.

Here are a few pics from the other weekend at The Balkans and some from last weekend at North Black, enjoy!

Richo on the 'Eastern Block Arete', Frontline, The Balkans

Richo on 'Paratroopin', Frontline, The Balkans

Danny on the unnamed v9 at The Hill, North Black

Russell on 'Sunday Gardener', The Campground, North Black

Night sessions

Just a quick one...

Last night Richo and I grabbed a lantern and busted out to North Black for an after work night session which proved very fruitful with me sending the unnamed V9 at the right hand end of the steep wall at The Hill. Stoked!!!
Richo made awesome progress on it too and I'm sure he will send really soon!

Girralang!

Out.

The Balkans

Hey all :-)

Well this weekend Danny, Richo and I hit the Balkans in Sydney for some bloccing on Saturday and had a blast.

We got there about 9:30 after some small detours (due to Richo forgetting a map :p haha) and Danny met us there soon after. We did some great moderates to get warmed up then put some effort in 'Paratroopin' v8. We got the sequence dialed but didn't quite get it done... next time for sure.
The Danny and Richo sent the classic 'Sloper Dan Milosovic' v5 and I did 'Boogie Knights' v8, so we were all pretty darn happy!

We did a few more moderates and with Richo sending a classic v4 (Battle of The Shirts? Can't remember the name.. that might be it), Danny doing a sketchy highball mantle and I got up 'Macedomia' v5.

So all in all a great day leaving us with very little skin left (Richo's tips were bleeding!) and some sore muscles on Sunday, but with an enforced rest day in Canberra on Sunday due to rain it was all about relaxing for the rest of the weekend.
We might make it up there again this weekend, and I might get some pics from the day up this week... watch this space.

Some pics...

Hi all :)

So I have a been a little lazy on the photo front of late, but I do have the excuse of not having an internet connection at home, but I just have to make the effort to bring stuff in to work for you all!

Here are a few random pics that I edited in Lightroom today, I started using it a few days ago and am really liking it... so yeah, here are a few random pics of mine that I like... enjoy!

Richo in the snow at North Black last weekend




Statue in my backyard

Macro of a plant in the Grampians

Richo on an unnamed V7 at The Hill, North Black



Danny on 'Zacs Arete', V8, The Campground, North Black

The Carillon on Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra at night


Steph and her cat Mooie



Russell and Joel in the car heading to the Grampians

Richo on 'Riding Shotgun' V6, Andersons, Grampians

Sunset at Taipan Wall, Grampians

Christina on 'Flash Gordon' V8, The Kindergarten, Grampians

So...

So its been a little while, lots has been going on and I just haven't got around to posting much, something I need to rectify!

Last weekend I didn't get out climbing at all, I just took a weekend to relax and take it easy which was nice, but the other guys got out and sent a bunch of hard stuff at North Black which was great to hear.

This weekend just gone we spent both days at North Black again (seems to be the norm lately!). Weather was crisp and saturday there was snow everywhere, which was pretty but as it melted all the higher crags that were covered in snow all got wet. I spent a little time on the sit start to Snoop Doggy Dog and nailed the first move but it might be a while before I have what it takes to put the whole thing together... will be a hard problem I think... maybe 7C+?
Saturday arvo we went to The Hill where Russell nailed the unnamed v9 on the steep wall there... awesome stuff, he absolutely cruised it! Danny and I did well on it too but not well enough to send... soon though!

Sunday we headed back to The Hill to try it again but didn't do so well. Rich sent the great little v8 round the back of the steep wall there which was awesome though!
I scrubbed up another hard project that keeps going left up the arete from that v8... every move is well 'ard... its going to be another really hard line when it goes.. So many projects to work!

The big news at the moment is that vandals have completely destroyed the problems on the steep wall at The Hill at North Black... some young motorbike riders destroyed all the lines with crowbars and hammers leaving the big undercling flake half gone and dangerously loose. We will attempt to glue what is left to avoid it falling on someone, but please spread the word about the damage to prevent anyone getting hurt by it. Also please reports any and all vandals to the National Parks and Wildlife Service. These thoughtless individuals have ruined beyond repair some of the most popular problems at the area in one fell swoop, we don't want this sort of thing happening again so keep your eyes open for signs of damage at other areas.

I will get some new photo's up soon when I have the chance.

Until then, have fun all :-)

Snow and Sending

This weekend saw what was possibly the biggest crew ever at North Black, about 20 people turned up to boulder at the Campground on saturday morning, there were people everywhere, the majority of which were all down from Sydney, etc!


And with a big crew came big sends, Danny and Richo finally both nabbed ascents of the ultra classic 'Zac's Arete' v8. It was awesome to see them both send this after all the hard work they have put in on it! As well as them Paul Meharg and Doug both got up this one, making it possibly the most times its been sent in a day!


Paul also made quick work of 'Socks' v6 and an unnamed v7 at the Campground. Brendan also nabbed 'Socks' for his first v6, great work man!


After all the excitement at the Campground we headed to Dog Rock where we had to walk through snow to get to the crag, a rarity in Australia!

Paul, Joel and Danny worked on 'Snoop Doggy Dog' v8, getting really close, while I worked on a low sit start into the same problem that will probably add a grade or two and a proper sit start to it.

All in all a great weekend was had. Sunday the weather was a bit bad so we rested for the day. Keen as mustard for this coming weekend as we are heading back up to Sydney, should be a blast.

Here is a pic from me and a few from Russell after that, enjoy!

Danny on 'Snoop Doggy Dog'

Paul on 'Little Bow Wow'

Me on 'Snoop Doggy Dog'

Danny on 'Snoop Doggy Dog'

Rusty's pics

Just another quick one, here is a link to my friend's Flickr page. His name is Russell Horton and he is pretty good behind a lens, have a geez at some of his pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29250395@N05/

Enjoy!

New problems at Crumbly

Hi all,

Just a quick one, the two new problems put up at Crumbly in Sydney on saturday by Chris Webb Parsons are called 'Logical Progression' and 'Progressive Agression', both weighing in at 8B/v13.

I am also keen to start posting a bit more news from around the country as more people are starting to read my blog so if you have any new about anything climbing related just drop me a line at: dunkcranks@hotmail.com, pics are always welcome too :-)

This weekend were off to North Black again, hopefully to send some more great lines that we have on our wish lists!

Watch this space!

Duncan

Squidney

On the weekend I headed off to Sydney to get away for a few days and visit some friends that I dont get to see enough.

Saturday we went to Crumbly where a huge crew all met up for a great day. I sent 'Anorexic' v5 pretty quickly after having been shut down by it last time I was here, then made great progress on the great 'Black Magic' v8. Will definitely be back there soon to clean that one up!

Chris was in his usual strong form and quickly dispatched two new v13/8B first ascents naming one 'Logical Progression' and leaving the other unnamed for now, will give you all a heads up when it gets named. Both are clasic hard lines with a high and commiting finish. Great stuff man :-)

This weekend some of the guys from up Sydney / Wollongong way will be trekking down to get on some nice granite treats, should be another killer weekend, can't wait!

Here are some pics from my weekend...

Chris Webb Parsons on 'Logical Progression' v13/8B

I stopped at a rest area on the highway to have a nap on my way home and met this little fella, he was way too cute to pass up a photo or two of him

A few pics...

Here are a couple of my pics from North Black the other weekend as promised :-)

Enjoy! (Feedback welcome as always!)

Danny on 'Zac's Arete' v8, The Campground

Richo on an unnamed v3, The Hill

Richo on an unnamed v7, The Hill