April at Mt Arapiles and in The Wimmera

It’s been eleven days since we last checked in on the ninth of April, when it was raining quite steadily. It's been pretty dry since that wet couple of days, but the grass in the campground here at the lake has responded to the moisture in the soil. Here's a photo showing the edge of our camp set-up merging with the surrounding environment ...

We’ve had an interesting time with a mixture of action and inaction and adventure and (a slight) misadventure. We’ve farewelled our friends Justin, Stu, Bob and John, took a hike around an obscure section of Mt Arapiles, pushed the pedals of our bikes to The Mount and back, had a drive to the Grampians - witnessed once again the power of wildfire - and done some climbing.

The day after our previous post, rain was forecast and threatened all morning without producing anything. We decided to take a punt and headed over to The Mount in the middle of the afternoon. Happily, the rock was dry so Di elected to lead a lovely, long pitch called Skylark, which we’ve done a number of times. It’s consistently good climbing with abundant protection and goes on and on for a whopping fifty-five metres. Graded 16 (about 5.7 in the YDS grading scale) it’s one we highly recommend. I followed that with a route called Greasy Burritos, which our guide calls “worthwhile” and “not as slippery as it sounds”. It doesn’t get a star but is a fun little twenty-eight metre route. One thing about the brilliant select guidebook that Glenn Tempest and Simon Mentz have produced for Mt Arapiles is that every climb in it is worth doing. We thought that was enough for the day and, with a promising forecast for the next day thought we’d save some energy.

The next morning looked decidedly gloomy but we thought we’d head over to The Mount with the expectation that it would clear up. Just as we got out of the car a light drizzle started to fall so we thought we might as well have a walk. Justin, Stu, Bob and John had arrived a bit earlier than us as it was their second-last day of climbing before heading home. We spotted them on The Atridae as we wondered past. In the photo below Bob is the figure at the top left, setting up his belay at the top of Hell For Leather (John is at the bottom); at the top right Justin is belaying Stu, who is following him up Surface To Air ...

The Atridae

On we wandered, climbing a little pinnacle along the way ...

... discovering that even this obscure bit of rock had some routes on it and even an old descent anchor still in situ ...

Yes, the photo is the right way up! (You can tell by the grass at the bottom.) The anchor has been used to rappel down to rig climbs below, and has a rope attached as a hand rail for getting off the back.

It was fun finding little bits of easy rock to scramble over along our way ...

When you wander around off the beaten track a little, you realise how The Mount is really one big, complex warty lump of rock with endless nooks and crannies. Here’s Di standing on another open slabby section between small bits of scrub ...

Yes, there is a bit of soil clinging to its surface which grow some sizeable trees. We loved the way this one had found its little niche and even large branches resting on the ground were still leafy and green ... 

But it’s a tenuous proposition. Those bigger trees have deep routes but much of the vegetation on The Mount springs up when a good season comes, only to wither and die a few years later after the normal dry patterns re-establish themselves. 

Here’s another view from the shoulder of The Mount.  The Bluffs are visible on the left, with Wimmera wheat fields spread out below ...

Our haphazard route took us out to the summit road. The Power of Growing Things presented itself in the form of this mushroom pushing its way up through the hard-packed road gravel right on the edge of the tarmac ...

We decided this bit of an excursion would be enough exercise for the day and we could happily spend the rest of it reading and relaxing back at camp. Lovely!

The next couple of days brought beautiful weather and we had a great lot of fun, climbing the moderate classic Kaiser/Resignation via a harder variant we hadn't done before, followed by a trip to the summit to do three pitches. Here's Di following the first pitch of an easy but delicious route called Touchstone ...

... and then leading up towards the divergent finishing pitch Touch Type ...

She's about to move up and slightly right for a neat little bit of thin climbing past a couple of bolts. The regular route continues more or less straight up before moving gradually left to the top left corner of the buttress to finish. We just had to rappel back to the ledge I'm belaying from in this photo to do that pitch as well.

 The next day we took time out to go to Horsham for a bit of shopping and get the washing done before getting back on the rock the day after. We decided to explore the Heckle/Jeckle area with a New Zealand couple who were camping next to us and we'd become friendly with. None of us had been to this area  before and we were having a good time until our fun was brought to an unexpected halt. 

While I was pulling a rope though a top anchor, a rock in the crack was dislodged and came down about ten metres, hitting Di on the foot. Although the blow itself hurt, Di didn't feel too bad and was happy to continue climbing at first, so we did another couple of routes. However by the time we finished those she was very sore and I was worried that she might have broken something so we headed off to the Wimmera Base Hospital in Horsham. After a reasonably short wait in Emergency, Di had X-Rays which suggested that nothing was broken. (WHEW! A lucky escape.) The doctor told her that she should keep weight off it as much as possible for the next 48 hours, with elevation and ice for good measure. It was pretty bruised. Here's a photo of the underside of the foot where the bruising has drained to ...

We had a quiet time around camp the next day: Di with her foot up, duly iced; me with the job of keeping the caged bear happy!

The next morning we decided to take a trip to the Grampians. We wanted to see how extensive the fires were that had gone through in January. It was a very sobering experience. Here's a view across to Hollow Mountain, which was pretty much the epicentre of the fire ...

Remarkably, the dwellings  and outbuildings in the small settlement of Wartook seem to have escaped unscathed in this maelstrom ...

Some areas were totally scorched ...

... while other spots show a bit of greenery still clinging to otherwise obliterated trees and shrubs ...

The Australian bush is well adapted to fire, however. The next two shot show the regeneration that is already underway ...

Di felt she was up to getting back on rock again after her two days of invalidity, so we headed off to do a long easy climb that we hadn't done before. She was very pleased to find that she was moving well and it wasn't hurting her to put weight on her foot. We had quite a long day out in the end and by the end of it the foot was getting a little sore again.

Not wanting to push our luck, we decided to have another quiet day yesterday. We managed to have a Skype with our grandkids in Cairns and another with my brother in Winnipeg before heading to Horsham to get a couple of things. Di needed a new pair of pyjamas and she wanted to see if we could get a hot water bottle for those colder nights in the camper trailer. We got home in time to have a gentle bike ride, with a coffee in Natimuk on our way back. Here's the route we took, with the elevation profile at the bottom:

It looks hillier than it is: the total elevation gain and loss over the thirty kilometres of our ride was actually only 150 metres! The colours of the paddocks make very interesting viewing. You might notice that the "Imagery Date" is 4/4/2013, so almost exactly a year ago. This suggests that autumn last year was a lot wetter than it has been so far this year. Mt Arapiles is the lumpy bit at the left end of our loop, where we zigged and zagged a bit over bush tracks.

We had a good day out today, doing another climb we hadn't been on before: Oedipus Rex. The guidebook says "the superb first pitch is both embarrassingly tricky and seriously run-out". Di did a great job leading this pitch and did find quite a lot of gear - no doubt modern protection works better in some places than what was around when this climb was first put up way back in 1968.

The route finishes with a strenuous pull through a roof, and Di got this series of photos of me coming to grips with it ...

Sorry, there's no photo of me pulling up over the lip: Di decided it would be good to attend to her belaying duties at this point!

Finally, here's a photo she took while I was dismantling the final belay at the top ...

Hi Mom!

The Natimuk Market was just packing up as we came through town and we managed to grab a few goodies to bring home to camp. Another fine day playing hooky in the Wimmera. And that's about it for now ...

Cheers

Doug and Di