The Onsight Chronicles

It has been an extraordinarily wet summer. So not much been happening in Oz climbing of late? Everyone being hiding their heads in the gym? Glad for all the rain and the excuses that it can give?

WRONG!

There has actually been heaps going on. In fact I’d say it has been a super busy summer, at least around here in the Blue Mountains but further afield as well, with motivated climbers doing good work, stepping up and dispatching projects all over the show. It has been great to be a witness to this positive energy and so here is my first little news report in a while — and stay tuned for more news following soon.

Drum roll please.

Presenting…

Lee’s new 33!

Lee Cossey, one of Australia’s strongest and best all-round rock climbers, has completed a new route which he named Saturation Point and graded 33 (5.14b, 8c) at Diamond Falls (Blue Mountains). Lee of course is no stranger to cranking out 33’s and harder but what really caught my eye about this one is not just that it is hard but also the line — a whopping 45 metres snaking its way halfway around the massive amphitheatre at Diamond Falls. Now I can’t climb 33, never could, never will, but “if” I only could, then I’m sure this is a route that would really appeal. If Serpentine was 33 then maybe just maybe it’d look something like this!

Lee was kind enough to recently climb the route again for my camera. I asked him to climb it in sections and I abseiled in and photographed it from the left and then later ran around and took some shots from across the amphitheatre, about 40 metres away from the action. This second angle was good for catching the action on one particularly cool sequence of moves. We then returned on another day and this time I lugged a 400mm f2.8 lens (which I happened to have on loan from Nikon Professional Services) and honed right in on that sequence.

So here is a little photo essay with selected shots from both photo shoots presented together in the order that you’d climb the route.

(Beta warning — in case you want to get all technical and are worried about blowing the onsight).

The route starts up Some Kind of Bliss and traverses right a country mile in it’s search for golden goodness. The traverse is rather run out…

Then things get harder, much harder…

And sweeter…

Then reset the compass and start heading north and launch into the coolest sequence of moves which, incidentally, is not the crux.

Let’s put a 1.4x tele converter on the 400mm lens and hone in with 560mm and…

….imagine you are at Buoux for a moment and do like “la rose”…

Unwind without blowing a gasket…

Continue on your merry way…

But if you’re pumped by now and thought it was all over you’re in for a rude shock — for glory is still guarded by a massive gnarly roof!

Yeah the roof is massive. It’s incredible gnarly. Sure to be real heart breaker. And I’ve got some great shots of it. If you’d like to see them be sure to check out the next issue of Rock magazine, out soon!

And there you have it — Saturation Point.

Thanks Lee, great stuff!

For more about Lee and his climbing see www.cosseyclimbing.com