Our Easter pilgrimage to Mt Arapiles begins with a mad rush to get on the road. With around 13 hours of driving ahead of us, everyone is keen to beat the worst of the Easter traffic and start putting the kilometres behind us. However, despite the overabundance of nervous energy associated with way too much drooling over the glossy new guidebook, plans to leave at 5:30 or 6pm were inevitably delayed, and the first half hour on the road got us 200m along Mountain St to the intersection at Broadway (that’s right, just a stones throw from uni). Despite this setback, and the best efforts of Georgi’s navman to send us to Albury (it didn’t know about 90% of the roads we used on the way, Fail!), Dean, Georgi and I (Michael L) managed to roll into the Pines campground at midday on Easter Friday and carved out a small space amongst the sea of tents for the SURMC campsite. We were quickly followed by the double D (Dave D), Jimbo (James H) and Emily in the double D’s car, while Mick and Sean arrived several hours later after taking the slow road (despite leaving earlier, a classic first timers mistake). Others arriving over the following days were Pete, Gavin, Jesse, Fiona, Tim, Strat, Dave M and Mike.

As always, there was quite an atmosphere around the historic Pines campground, all the usual dirtbag climbing bums, groups of obnoxious boulderers and boisterous uni groups were in attendance. Still, nothing beats the satisfaction of returning to the campsite after a good day of climbing and trading the day’s stories over a (moderately cool) beer. At the SURMC campsite, evenings typically consisted of; attempts to resurrect the club’s non-functioning stoves, sampling the very finest cask wines, scouring the guidebook for tomorrow’s line and cooking up large quantities of pasta or rice. The culmination of each evening, however, was the release of mystery spirits, fresh from Pete’s dad’s cellar. The mystery spirits were a mystery for a reason; you wouldn’t drink them if you knew what they were. Nonetheless each instalment in the series was hotly anticipated, culminating in the final cocktail “the chalk bag” which combined all the spirits along with a few other ingredients. One evening also saw the celebration of Fiona’s birthday, with a “cake” that consisted of a block of chocolate and matches for candles. The serving of the “cake” was notable for the use of the pizza server that Pete obtained for 20c from the Rushworth Easter fair en route to Arapiles. I must admit that I was most disappointed when I later discovered that it wasn’t actually Fiona’s birthday (we were a week early).

The other classic Araps evening activity is a visit to the infamous squeeze boulder, a must for Arapiles first timers. I think my biggest achievement for the week was setting a new SURMC speed record through the squeeze boulder of 15s (sub 10s is definitely possible). But major props must go to Sean for his spirited attempt at the squeeze test. He made it most of the way through before becoming wedged solid at the “crux”, the entry to the “birthing canal”. We were considering leaving him there for a few days till he thinned down a bit, but thanks must go to Dean for being the “force” behind the reverse extraction. The advice for aspiring squeezers; it’s best to keep your shirt on.

Mornings were a bit more sedate with the general pattern being that whoever was keen to get on it would get up early and drag their climbing partner up to get in a full day on the rock or to beat the crowds to the classic lines. Despite some talk of “alpine starts” the sun was always up by the time any group headed towards the cliffs. Following the early risers there would be the bulk of the group milling around at breakfast, trying to decide where to head for the day and trying to psyche themselves up to get on something challenging. Then, just as everyone else was preparing to leave, Pete would rise from his monstrosity of a tent and proceed to prepare himself a hot breakfast. this practice did backfire on him one morning however, when he suffered a stove malfunction and the flames came shooting out of the connection between the gas bottle and the stove (seemingly a common occurrence with that type of stove). Pete managed to calmly turn off the gas flow but then decided to grab his scorching hot billy from the top, burning his hand.

So what of the climbing? Well, despite much talk and attempted sandbagging, no one got on “Mr Chicken” or “Boston’s climb”. For me, however, the major disappointment of the week was that no one got the chance to experience the pure joy of “Scorpion” (despite attempts to get on it on two separate days by Gavin and Jesse). Nonetheless, there are more classics at Araps than you can shake a stick at (or climb in a week for that matter) and everyone managed to climb their share. Particularly popular routes included the classics “Syrinx”, “Lamplighter” and “Muldoon”, which each saw numerous ascents from SURMC members.
Other than romping up the classic lines I’m also pleased to note that there was sufficient “getting on it” to result in a good number of lead falls. Tim managed to take a decent fall on “Chinese Algebra” (on a #1 rock!), the Double D took swings off of the roofs of “Pilot Error” and “Kachoong” and I took a small drop off “Telemachus”. However the fall of the week definitely has to go to Jesse on “Scorpion direct start”. This climb has a reputation for being quite tough for the grade, and, getting a bit pumped, he thought he might like to take a rest on the hex that he’d just placed. What he didn’t count on was the hex popping out as he grabbed it in an attempt to gently lower himself onto the rope, the look on his face must have been classic as he fell, hex in hand, onto his next piece.

Araps at Easter equals crowds, but there’s plenty of rock so it’s not usually too hard to get on something. OK, there will be large groups of top ropers but they usually leave after the weekend and confine themselves to places such as the plaque area and declaration crag. One group, however, stuck around for most of the week and provided major annoyance. This group was an international group of special police on a training trip and all I can say is I hope they don’t have to scale any cliffs to get to the bad guys. The annoyance was due to their habit of turning up to a crag and taking the whole place over both when they were top roping (guides setting up top ropes hours before the rest of the group arrived) and when they started leading. I think some members of the SURMC crew were particularly unlucky, running into them at multiple areas on multiple days. However, Mick and Strat did manage to get one back on them. They had planned to climb “Syrinx” one morning, and on the walk to the base of the climb they saw a bus roll up and disgorge a large number of “commandos” in the direction of the crag. The quick thinking Mick yelled “RUN!” and he and Strat tore off down the path, beating the “commandos” by a scant thirty seconds to the base of the climb. Upon their arrival Mick decided to break it to them that “you know everyone hates you”. That’s balls!

The Commando group did at least provide some amusement value with their calamitous and slow climbing and their calls of “aye aye” at every stage of communication. Their instructors had obviously neglected to mention the topic of planning and finding belays on multipitch climbs, as their tactics in this regard seemed to consist of simply climbing to the end of the rope and then calling “I need more rope” to their partner for about half an hour. I only hope they can be a bit more “stealth” when it is for real.

One thing which the SURMC crew were fortunate enough to (largely) avoid was being involved in epics. There were the usual benightments (that’s just using up all of the available climbing time right?) and off route excursions, and a group of 5 did have to scramble down off Mitre rock in the dark with one headtorch between them, but I’m glad to say that the only real epic story of the week relates to other people. Just imagine that you and your climbing partner are swinging in free space out from the back of the bluffs. You are unable to get back to the rock and the only thing between both of you and the big plunge is a couple of metres of rope and the belayer’s deathgrip on said rope. You are having an epic. The question you are asking yourself (if you’re still thinking coherently) is “how did it get to this?” Well it began with our unfortunate fellow thinking a good way to impress his two female climbing buddies would be to take them up to the bluffs and demonstrate his climbing prowess on the imposing “Thunder Crack”. However the third was unable to do the climb and thus unable to remove the gear, so our fellow decides he should be lowered so he can clean the gear himself. Unfortunately, he failed to anticipate that when he removed the last piece both he and his terribly frightened belayer would swing out over the void, losing contact with the rock. With only a few metres of rope left beneath the belay device they could not lower any further, and with the belayer near hysterical it was very fortunate that another group were able to grab them and haul them back to the rock while they were still swinging close enough. I only hope that the girls were not too traumatised to go climbing again and that our fellow sticks to bouldering in future.

Although we avoided having any climbing epics, there was a bit of bad luck going around. Actually, it mostly seemed centred on Dean and Mick. Mick’s bad luck relates to the drive home, where he got done for speeding going 111 in a 100 zone on some ass end of nowhere road in country Victoria and then later hit a roo near Wagga Wagga, which left a decent dent in his bonnet. Dean, on the other hand, had his phone become a casualty of the “depth charge” incident and injured his shoulder which ended his week of climbing a few days early. The “depth charge” incident occurred when Dean and Georgi scrambled up a few meters onto a ledge to start the climb “Hell for Leather”. Since they would not be descending back to the ledge and not wanting to have to come back and pick up their bag they thought they’d just throw it from the ledge towards where they would be descending. When the bag hit the ground it made a noise later described as being like a depth charge. When they retrieved the bag after completing the climb the source of the noise was discovered to be Georgi’s water bladder bursting, which soaked the entire contents of the bag including Dean’s phone. Apparently he hated that phone anyway.

In total for the trip I’d estimate that SURMC members collectively bore down on around 200 pitches of climbing, took 5 lead falls, passed through the squeeze boulder about 15 times, consumed approximately a metric ton of pasta and rice and cleaned out Pete’s dad’s spirits backlog from the 80’s. All in all a very successful and well attended trip. For the Araps first timers the overall impression was of bomber rock, bomber gear and wonderful climbing with a combination of some of the most incredible jugs you will ever have the change to pull down and some of the smoothest, glassiest and most featureless rock you will ever stare up at. I dare say we will all be keen to get back to the mount as soon as possible.