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Me, an aspiring trad climber, and Meike Go, my trusty side kick set our sights on discovering one of Queensland’s most secluded crags, Cania Gorge. One problem though, neither of us owned a trad rack. With our hopes and dreams of adventure lying in tatters before we could even get started, we prayed fervently to the climbing gods for salvation. Our prayers were answered when Dan Cox took a heroic fall on Mt Barney and broke his foot, freeing up his full trad rack. Adorned with a set of Dans shiny toys, and only a faint idea of how to use them, we jumped in our borrowed car and headed for the interior.
6 hours later, after miles of dry bushland, and frequent servo stops for gas and pie, we entered the sandstone spire gates of Cania Gorge. Although plenty of information was available online, we decided that we would screenshot only the essentials and leave the rest up to chance and the imagination. This left us with a rather incomplete picture of how to get to the base of the Milky Way wall, which would be the location of our first attempts at mastering the dark arts of trad climbing. No matter, our ignorance to the details would make us fearless, and our inexperience would stoke the fires of our inner psych.
We followed a faint path up the ridgeline to the base of the cliff, the only sound coming from our labored breathing and the crunching of dry grass under our boots. The path weaved its way around massive boulders, the results from centuries of erosion, or more likely, from a historical titanic battle held between giants atop the sandstone cliffs.
40 minutes later, just as we planned, we were lost. The cliff looked right but we couldn’t match up any of the pictures to what was in front of us. In the spirit of trad climbing, we decided that today would be a day of first ascents. With only my limited trad experience at frog to guide me, I picked out a 7m crack that looked like it could take some hand sized gear. We scoped it out for spiders, suited up, and got ourselves psyched to climb. Meike, equipped with hexes, cams, and nuts, fit for a big wall, donned her BD climbing helm and approached the climb. In true Viking fashion, she drew a Wildcountry hex from her harness swung the attached sling in an arc and plopped the hex as high as she could get it in the crack.
‘’’Bomber’’! I exclaimed, first try and she was already reasonably protected before she even got off the ground. A couple of deep, psych inducing breaths later, and Meike was thrutching and hand jamming her way up the crack, all intents and purposes to get to a glorious jug about 4 meters up. Every opportunity Meike had to use a face hold for her feet she took, unfortunately for her, the chossy footholds blew up upon contact. Hands changed to fists as Meike sporadically thrust her legs out onto the face in search of holds, but ended up having to retreat to the safety of the crack. Through monumental effort, she managed to claw her way up to the jug and place her second piece of the day, a blue blackdiamond Cam, before topping out. She beamed down at me from the top of the climb, scratches all over the sides of her arm, a twig sticking out of her pony tail and said ‘’’that was the worst climb I have ever done’’. ‘’What do you want to call it’’? I replied. ‘’piece of shit’’ she exclaimed. How poetic…
Nonetheless, our first forays into Cania resulted in a first ascent, we were well on our way to uncovering the mysteries of trad climbing.
Day 2 at Cania we managed to find the Milky Way wall and were met by a troupe of Sunny Coast climbers. Our motley crew then tackled a handful of the best rated trad and sport climbs there. My personal favorite, Bipolar Unicorn. Climbing wise, this crag is the best for the short, clean, pure routes. However, to me it felt a little too much like sport climbing, little was left to the imagination and placements may as well have been bolts. As the sun reached its zenith our caravan of climbers packed up and headed for the shaded lazy ledges. There we detached ourselves from the safety of more experienced climbers and bush bashed and scrambled our way up scree slopes to a ledge belay halfway up the cliff face.
Here, situated in a slight crevice was a 4-star 16, the ugly duckling. Oh boy, this is the type of climb that you only dream of. An easy 5-meter slab leads to the base of a chimney with god knows what inside, and god knows what when you pop out the top of it. Naturally, after watching Meike freak out leading a 12 at Milky way wall, I told her that she would lead this stellar climb. Meike looked at me full of skepticism and doubt ‘’you’ve got to be joking, I’m not leading that’’. Fortunately, I can be quite persuasive and eventually she was convinced that she could do it. So I belayed as she tentatively edged her way up the slab until she was swallowed by the chimney. Hereafter all I could here were animal grunts followed by angry yells of ‘’why wont you fucking fit’’!
Eventually, after around 45 minutes, she completed her onsight and I got to second my way up the hidden belly of Cania Gorge. To my delight, the chimney sported 2 handsized cracks running up two of the walls. One of the cracks must have been fist sized wide but stretching hundreds of meters deep, with a light coming out the other end, which made it seem like the entire lazy ledges was in fact a pillar. Scary thought that. Anyway, I performed all sorts of dark arts in that chimney such as pleasant wriggling, thrutching, knee jamming, chicken winging, arm bars aided by snug handjams. The ugly duckling eventually spewed me out the top where I lay splayed out next to a disheveled Meike. ‘’that was sick’’! I exclaimed, Meike grudgingly agreed that it was a pretty cool climb.
Day 3: The Ugly duckling had us craving more adventure, so we set out on our last day to the Castle, a crag directly opposite the Milky Way. Only 3 climbs were completed this day as we spent the majority bush bashing and getting lost. Unfortunately, less popular crags do not come with well worn, obvious trails. I did hop on the most sandbagged sport route ever, a 4-star 21 called Orca, with two holds breaking off early on, slightly overhanging arete climbing, filled with hectic heel hooks and big throws up to hopefully bomber holds. Orca took the good part of the morning to top. Meike's attempt to second included multiple yells for me to take up to the bolt, lest she swing out too far from the wall and can’t get back on. Any burly lover of overhangs and aretes should jump on this climb, you won’t be disappointed.
All in all, a pretty adventurous trip, and a great introduction to sandstone trad climbing. If you need any tips, give me a ping. Enclosed is a map.
Cheers, Steven vdB
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