Week Two in the Grampians

Just a quick post from Horsham Public Library where the lady at the desk was kind enough to not charge me for internet!

Climbed in a bunch of different areas and on loads of different routes already.  The rock is an awesome really unique type of sandstone.  The closest thing I can compare it to is Hueco Tanks in West Texas, (at least the parts of Hueco with dishes and open hand holds, it's not nearly as crimpy).  I've climbed nothing harder than V7 (higher numbers mean harder boulder problems, or climbs) so far, but one of those was a flash (I climbed it first try), and I've almost got two V8s and a V9.  There's a V11 I want to project (spend lots of time perfecting the moves so you can climb the whole route from start to finish without falling) that I did all the moves on but the crux (hardest) one.  Here is a video of someone climbing the V11, it's called Forced Entry because there's a mono (a pocket you can only fit one finger in) on the route that is really hard to use well becaue it's so small.  I also climbed this really fun highball V4 (highballs are boulder problems that are high enough that there is potential for injury, but V4 is a lower difficulty than I warm up on, and I had lots of spotters below me) called Volume 1000, next time I have interent I'll bring my camera and upload the pictures I got of me on it.

I did my best to translate the climbing jargon into english in the italics, so I hope the paragraph above is readable by everyone.

So an awesome ten days and that's just the climbing.  The climbers I've met so far have all been really cool interesting people.  I started the week climbing with a couple from Sydney who showed me around, then a group from Melbourne, and now another guy from Sydney.

I'm looking forward to climbing some harder stuff this next week, now that I'm used to the rock and have worked out what I want to project.