Jono and I hiked into the big red wall that’s below The Fortress and visible clearly from The Gallery. To me, its one of the last great walls of the Grampians that hasn’t been climbed. It is a long and steep 1 hour approach up a long ridge, but about 30 minutes less than gettign up to the Fortress proper. I had sussed it out from the ground about 5 years ago and thought it looked pretty cool. Well, this time we brought the drill, bolts and assorted ropes. Firstly we climbed two pitches of rubbish up the left side to get on top, then spent most of the day rapping and bolting the line. It’s not a sport route, quite a bit of trad especially in in the middle and right at the top (magnificent trad corner!). Its an awesome wall, a bit like Flame Wall but more straight up and down climbing. Lots of killer jugs. It overhangs massively – about 10m in 40m so its gonna be pretty pumpy! Most of the climbing is about grade 23ish – but annoyingly there is one blank section that looks crimpy and hard – probably 25 . Because of the length and all the trad the route will probably be done in two pitches – there is a good belay ledge about a 1/3rd of the way up the wall on the right that would be a suitable stopover point – we ran out of bolts to install anchors here, in fact our bolting was cutting it fine as I wasn’t expecting the wall to be as high as it was. Its 9 bolts plus a rap anchor – which we managed to install using one battery. The bolts are a mixed mess of styles - expansions, glue in carrots (with hangers) and lastly ringbolts. Its all I had in my bolt stash! We didn’t get a chance to climb it as we used glue-ins. Its going be killer and I’m really excited to get back up there ASAP (it will have to be in 3 weeks time when I get back from OS). For the afternoon Jono and I ran up to the Fortress and blasted off the 150m long Quincas Borba (18). Gets three stars in the guide but I didn’t think much of it, quite loose, sandy, dirty and scary! We topped out as the sun slipped below the horizon which wasn’t ideal as its a long way from anywhere up there!. Jono had forgotten to bring his head torch so it was a long and epic walk out – about 2 hours. I had my torch!

Sunday – Our legs were buggered from all the walking and running on the Saturday so we headed to Red Rocks to try and work some unfinished business. Warmed up on the new route we did last weekend (Bikini Bootcamp – 20) and toproped a good grade 22 variant to the right of it. Then on to my new nemesis project – Chrysalis, which is a massive left hand extension to Fat Fingered Freak that I bolted last year. Back then it felt bloody impossible, but now after 2 days work its getting very close. I have linked the whole bottom traverse bit (26?) and only have to pull off on linkage the super hard crimp section near the top to finish it. Its very footwork dependant as its reachy and thin. My girly fingers get worn out quickly so it will have to wait until the next time im up there. I was super happy with the linkage I did get though. Last week Adam managed to do the start moves on his crack project as well so we are all going great guns!