Fever - a new route on Big Glassy (Wolgan Valley, Australia)

 Vera Wong

 

First impressions count for a lot in this world. This was the first time that Andrew and I climbed together. In fact, I met him for the first time in the car park that morning.  By the evening of the same day we were half way up a big sandy cliff called Big Glassy, wedged between a few small saplings and strapped to a few cams jammed tightly in a very sandy crack. I was wondering what we were still doing up on this big wall. Late in the afternoon we had decided to back off our climb, but we ended up sticking the night out on the uncomfortable wall. I’m sure I only did it for the illusion of that good first impression.

 

It is easy to be amazed in retrospect where you end up with a bit of keenness and naivety. It was the summer of 1994 that I heard that some guy from Sydney, Andrew McAuley, was desperately seeking a climbing partner to climb a secret line up a ‘vertical sandpit’ in the Wolgan valley. I’d done a bit of big-walling, didn’t think that a vertical bit of rock would remaining standing if it was really that loose and promptly got in touch. McAuley, I was warned, was a veritable choss-master.

 

We met in the carpark on a Saturday morning and made a plan. Big Glassy is about 350m of cliff, so we figured about 8 pitches of aid-climbing over two days with all manner of climbing gadgetry, food and water – three litres per person per day, 12litres. Andrew’s secret line was on the left-hand side of the wall, a shallow corner in the smooth orange wall capped by a large roof.

 

On the first pitch, we got a small surprise– Andrew found a rusty old piton in the crack and then old bolts at belay. This made up think that maybe it wasn’t a new route. But then maybe the previous party hadn’t got to the top — so we kept climbing anyway. The morning disappeared in a steady shower of sand that poured from the corner as we wiggled wires and jammed cams into it. By the end of the second pitch there we found no further signs of other climbers.

 

Early afternoon and the boiling summer sun was high in the sky over the cliff. We kept on aiding, hooking and placing our own bolts to move through a few blank sections. The sun cooked us in the smooth, concave, orange dish of Big Glassy. It was feverishly hot and somehow we managed to drink 10 of our 12 litres of water. Below us the Eucalypt forest shimmered and danced in a blue-green haze. The bush cicadas screeched in delight.

 

With my evaporating bodily fluids went my excitement for our new route. There were other places I would rather have been - down below in the river was what came immediately to my mind. As I breached the news to Andrew, I hoped he wouldn’t think me unreliable. Our decision to retreat, bail, pike was a long laboured one. Something to do with budding  new-routers egos. Luckily, Andrew had actually been thinking the same thing and after all we had almost run out of water.

 

In the cool of night, from the side of Big Glassy, the snaking Wolgan River glinted in the moonlight. Far in the distance an unfamiliar light glowed on the horizon, like the lights of a big city, but we knew that there wasn’t one there. We rapped off early the following morning.

 

On our return to our cars, a sign under the wiper blades declared the park closed — high fire danger. We found out later that the glow in the distance had been huge bushfires ripping through the Blue Mountains, crown fires that exploded trees in their wake. The temperatures mid 40s, the humidly near zero.

 

Easter is definitely a much more sensible time to be climbing in the Wolgan. It took us four months before we felt like giving the route a second go.

 

On our second take, we climbed fast to our previous high point. We started on new ground, the fifth pitch early afternoon. It was the last pitch before the roof. As Andrew pinged knifeblades into the crack, I stared up and past him, contemplating my next lead, the roof. We hadn’t figured out whether we could get through its big and blank expanse. I remember swinging gently backwards and forward  lost in thought at my belay and to my horror I noticed the bolts were swinging with me. Slowly twisting out.

 

‘Andrew, I just pushed the belay bolts back in. Don’t fall off. OK?’ I tried to keep my voice casual tone, keeping my private somewhat distressed thoughts to myself.

 

‘What?’ He was concentrating on not bouncing around too much on a flexing knifeblade while drilling a bolt ‘I’m almost at the belay.’ I told him again when I reached his belay

 

In many ways Andrew embodies the Australian ‘she’ll be right’ approach to life, so actually wasn’t too fazed by the whole scenario. I borrowed a leaf out his book and continued, towards the roof.

 

My pitch was thin and thought provoking aid - some hooks, some cams, some pitons. I took a short fall as the rock exploded around a piton I had just stepped up on. It rained down and thankfully around my trusty belayer.

 

‘Where are you going?’ Andrew yelled up at me. From halfway up the pitch a hairline seam led out through the widest section of the roof. To Andrew I looked like I was choosing the biggest blankest part I could find.

 

The pitch got thinner – but it was all there - tied off knifeblades, a cam or two in pockets of a rock-honeycomb and then the drill had to come out. One bolt and I was hanging in space under the roof. A second bolt and I was right on the lip. I took a moment to soak up my birds-eye view: the valley was bathed in honey-coloured late afternoon light and long shadows stretched through the bush. I pulled up the rope to clip the second bolt and watched the first bolt pull out of its socket and spin with the quickdraw down the rope.

 

‘Andrew, the bolt just pulled out’ I tried to control my rising anxiety, the last thing I wanted to do was fall on all my aid-placements — and the belay.

 

‘Yeah’ he replied. Not exactly words of reassurance, but at least he was paying attention.

 

Luckily, the bolt I was hanging on stayed in its hole. I pulled over the lip onto a well-featured low-angle wall. I left my etriers dangling in the breeze and scampered easily up the rest of the pitch. Andrew sauntered up a final short, easy free pitch to the top of Big Glassy arriving a little before dark.

 

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if we had been more experienced climbers when we climbed Big Glassy that we would have been a little more aware of the risks we were taking and done things a little differently. Dodgy belays and bolts do not fit into my safe climbing ideal. Climbers of the crumbling sandstone towers in the United States have developed safe techniques for placing bolts in soft rock.

 

We called the climb Fever, for the heat and for our fervour in sticking out less than ideal situations. Since Big Glassy, Andrew and I have climbed a lot together and now have a fair idea of the ins and outs of our climbing personalities. Thankfully we have got past the first impressions stage. These days when we decide to back off something, we do it straight away, we know it won’t be the end of our climbing days  — second impressions may be longer in coming, but they probably count for a lot more.