piddo & narrowneck with dave

I've been stoked to be getting out with me mate dangerous dave a bit too - two weeks ago to Mt Piddington where we headed to the marvelous Flake Crack area, which stars, well, Flake Crack (17) a stellar lay-back flake, which we top-roped. I'd love to lead this in the near future! I led a coupla easy routes and we mucked around top-roping a few others. I'd love to get back and climb Tombstone Wall (15), it's been beckoning me since I first layed eyes on it a  few years ago. Sorry, but no pics that day.
On Friday, Dave & I returned to the Blueys, to hit up Narrowneck near Katoomba. We rapped without the guide and climbed a variation of one of the 100' Slab Direct (14) starts with the remainder of the original route. Afterwards on the walk back to the car we decided to climb an easy little crack we had spotted on our arrival, only 12m or so of easy climbing but it was enjoyable. I can't find any details on the route but it was roughly grade 10 with easy pro. I'm sure it's been climbed many times over, given it's position right by Technicolour Dreams and the access trail. Enjoying that, we rapped back down to check out the wall to the left. I took a fancy to the hanging arete to the left over TD, so I launched up to traverse to it... the pro was rather shoddy in sandy breaks so I reversed from a third the way along the traverse. The climbing was not technically hard, but position was rather exposed with nasty fall potential - and I had no idea if there was any pro at all once I reached the arete! On the ground I convinced myself that it'd go so I jumped on again, this time getting far better gear in on the traverse. And to my satisfaction I found a great gear spot for my lovely 3.5 Friend, clipped it, breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to give myself a rather sharpened sense of the emptiness behind me! Talk about exposure! It took a fair bit of composure to leave my little (protected!) foot ledge and to my dismay the pro opportunities were slim, but with easy climbing I headed up and topped out - thrilled to bits! Now I've gotta try & find out more info on this route, as I'm guessing it's been climbed before... but we'll see :) Dave then followed and we sat on the top ledge for a bit to gather our wits/wish for a beer!

Dave rapping down 100' Slab.

The hanging arete route

The view from the top!



















Good times!