Saturday, January 9, 2010

Mt Wellington

Today we drove up tree-lined steep road that snakes its way up and up the face of Mt Wellington. The blue slug did not like it and overheated. Then we walked up to the Northern butress, and climbed a route called Pegasus. The rock was an exceptionally gritty dolerite = like climbing on a very coarse sandpaper. This has a positive and a negative side -- on the positive your boots stick – on the negative so does your skin. The route followed a long crack which was often too wide to fist jam and relied on a sort of half chimney wiggle. The 35 metre first pitch on a very limited rack was... long run outs between runners, and I was very glad I was leading it, not the boys, and that it wasn't that hard. The next pitch crack was superlative jamming. And then came the piece-de-resistance the view from the top, which was just unbelievably spectacular across the folded landcape and myriad shining bays and inlets. We could see all the way from Southern Bruny Island to the other side of Port Arthur. This was followed by an almost cathedral like abseil – 40 metres down a huge chasm through chockstones the size of busses, and down, in free space with glimpses of a distant sea, with huge grey walls on either side of you.
We then drove down – the vehicle not overheating, packed up and made our way to Coles bay... or so we thought. The blue slug's temperature came up alarmingly on the hills, to the point that we decided to stop and let it cool and seek help in orford. Hence we are now in Tribunna and we're due to have it looked at this afternoon.

BigPond internet STILL isn't working. They promise. The delivery is... lacking.

3 comments:

  1. I remember doing the hiking trail up from Fern Tree with a bicycle on my back, in order to enjoy dodging tourist buses on the trip back down via the main road. Quite nice, although your way does sound more fun.

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  2. hope that the problem with the blue slug is easily sorted.

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  3. Sounds awesome...
    But off-width cracks.. Hmm.
    RK

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