mt kuring-gai

well, not a big update... spent the last few days doing some wedding planing and surfing in some ok surf but today I made it up to Mt Kuring-gai with Serge. It's a new crag with lots of nice ring bolts and lots to offer a low grade climber like myself! Had a good drive up, only 50 mins of so away and 5 mins later we had made our way through the sparse bush to the top of Fossil Crag, which Serge proceeded to fall down... well sort of. We kicked off with short Vandstone the Vampire (16) a well protected sports route with some fun moves. 

We had decided to hit up Mt Kuring-gai for based on it being a well drying crag, important after a very wet few days. And... I was nice and dry, but the rain had brought out THE LEECHES! I hate these little fuckers! We discovered them after we had waded through the waist deep ferns at the base of the crag (hoping for no snakes) as we found our next climb - Legoland * (16). With dozens of leeches seemingly coming from everywhere we made the decision to bail. I climbed up and from the top, hauled the pack then belayed Serge up to the nice dry upper crag. What relief, though I think Serge hates leeches more than me (if thats even possible!) It's a shame we had to leave that spot, as we both really enjoyed the climbing. (though we both thought the grading between the two 16s wasn't that consistant, we both found VtheV a bit harder)

We walked back up to the car and decided that we should check out the other crags whilst there, hoping for no leeches... So we made our way along the fire trail and scrambled down to the Motocross Wall. To our relief it the bottom was a lot dryer - with no leeches! We kick off on Extinction Never Felt So Good (17), the move off the second ledge proved much trickier that it looked! Afterwards we just stuffed around on the bouldery starts of some nearby harder climbs and called it a day. (a good day!)

Serge with the main Fossil Crag wall on the left - note the thick leech supporting fern life!

The overgrown base of Fossil Crag

Our first climb of the day, Vanstone the Vampire (16)

It goes up the middle of the wall.