“I wanted to take Angie out and teach her how to bolt before our trip to Tonga”
Could you try to hang on one arm for me, please? I jumped on the bar, let the left arm go and my body started an uncontrollable rotation. This is fucked, I thought … Not bad Lee said, we just need to make the shoulder stronger and you will be all right. In between the exercises during my shoulder recovery visits at his clinic, Lee mentioned that Angie and he bolted a few routes on the Newnes Plateau and that it would be rad to get some photos of it. The psyche was high, finding the time which would work for all of us ended up being the crux.
Almost a year later, Angie, Lee and I were on the infamous dirt roads which zigzag over the Newness plateau, kidding ourselves that this time no huge potholes will be hit and the craziest four-wheel drivers were still asleep. Half an hour and a few Madmax like scenes later the driving was getting quite rough so we continued on by foot. Within minutes we could see the crag. I could recognize two static ropes hanging from the top and traversing down a very steep cliff. “I wanted to take Angie out and teach her how to bolt before our trip to Tonga. The steep line on the left is Angie’s, the one on the right is mine.”, Lee noted.
I looked at Angie, then on the bloody steep cliff and imagined her negotiating one of the roof traverses, with a drill, glue and all the bolting gear dangling of her harness. “You are such a sandbagger Lee!”. What a first route to bolt. This would be a nightmare even for a seasoned pro. Then I thought, well ... maybe not if you are Angie, your mentor is Lee Cossey and you are already a pro with the benefit of not knowing that it does not always need to be this hard.
We got to the base of the cliff and before I could get ready, Angie had her shoes on. These pros are pros for a reason. I quickly jump on the static which was still attached to those tiny dyna bolts, unclipping them as I continued up. Fortunately, Angie had a good teacher and I did not end up unzipping the whole line. “Try the pocket on the right as an undercling. Yeah, that should work”.
While I was trying to figure out the best angles to capture the beautiful shapes and colors of the cliff, Angie was exchanging beta with Lee about the possible sequences. This was her first time on the route with climbing shoes on and I could hear the excitement in their voices. Will it go? Is it all too easy or way too hard? The beauty of the unknown, being first and unlocking the sequences for the first time. And what sequences they were. Somehow this cliff was sparse of the typical Blue Mountains edges and instead offered Frankenjura-like pockets with crazy moves to link them all together.
