Nowra Climbing Trip

Too much fun!! This was probably the first climbing trip we did which was focused mainly on looking at trying to see where we're at in terms of trying more difficult climbs and seeing if we're improved or not over the last couple of months.

To say the least, it went great! We drove down with the conditions looking a bit shitty but it ended up clearing up pretty nicely. First we thought we'd check out The Grotto area, since we'd only previously been to Thompson's Point for most of our climbing down in Nowra.

After looking through the guidebook we tried to find access points The Grotto area, and frankly it sucked. We couldn't find the proper descent path (parked too early in the road) and then when we did, we couldn't find the cliff-face or a good way to access it... So access pretty much took slightly over an hour.

With the clouds looming and the 20% chance of lunchtime rain looming, things looked pretty crap. But we eventually ended up identifying THE palm tree, which marked the Palm Tree Wall; and finally found the crag!

We ended up hopping on two fairly good climbs on the Palm Tree Wall, LHS:

• Backdraft* (18) 22m
  Essentially a warmup climb, and a warmup lead. Good fun; got a bit exciting with the finish having to step back out again. 
• Shmoken* (21) 22m
  Loads of fun. I think Dom and I were both kicking ourselves that the first pinch of the climb wasn't captured by a SLR, which we'll hopefully rectify in the future. The climbing on this wall was really great with super-balancy footwork and an exciting finish. I believe the lead fall I ended up taking as well was the first big fall that I've taken; probably equally big to the largest I've taken indoors. Just affirmed that the new quickdraws are sexy.

After we did those two, we moved over to the Gonads Wall and did Depleted Gonad Circumference *** (18), 20m; fairly interesting climb, wouldn't say it's a mega classic but was a lot of fun! 

By this stage the day was getting fairly late and we were getting pretty tired but Dom wanted to have a shot at a ridiculously hard climb (by our standards). We had a bit of a look at Bondage and Discipline; but frankly getting to the second bolt looked really shit and run-out, so we bailed. Instead we decided to look through the guidebook and we found Snowman and Kings Kross to be quite promising, so we headed on down there.

Snowman ** (23) 20m stands as the greatest thing that we've ever done outdoors. In terms of difficulty, it was certainly the hardest thing we've done outdoors; Dom spent about 30 minutes alone figuring out the first two/three moves. But it proved to be a nice testament to where we're at in terms of outdoor skill, combining a gutsy start with a lot of beautiful climbing, and an exciting finish :D

And that was Day 1! I'll do another post about Day 2 tomorrow :)