07 Aug 2011
An introduction to the fabled Akuna Bay: Three Star Threes and Five Star Fives
For our saturday arvo climbing mission, James had scoured Balint's bible and wanted to check out an Akuna Bay bouldering spot. Simon came all the way up ("Well, it's not the furthest I've driven for a bouldering day trip...")
I picked up James and we drove up from Mona Vale via McCars Creek Road, with a brief delay caused by trying to drink from a wide-mouthed Nalgene on a very windy road. After running in to Minus and Willis near the entrance station, it was time to find the crag.
James had been keen on Cottage Point, but I overruled in favour of Three Star Threes as it was the only one I'd heard of or had been able to find any mention of online. After driving up and down the length of General San Martin Drive in vain, I feel I can offer the following update to the Sydney Bouldering guidebook directions.
Drive exactly 1.6km from the first park entrance station (which seems to be often closed, we didn't have to pay any money). You will drive through a windy cutting on the right hand side of a steep hill. As soon as you exit the cutting and the railing ends, the road turns RIGHT (not left) out on to a straight section. The first car space is immediately on the left, a bigger one is 50m further down as described in the guidebook. This is the first car park:
From here an old fire trail in poor condition leads away through some thick brush.
The distances in the guidebook are WILDLY overestimated. For Five Star Fives you can pretty much walk a few metres down the trail and then break off left and head straight up the hill. There is no trail, if there was there is so much fallen wood around it's been covered up. For Three Star Threes walk maybe 50m down the track, until you come out of the 'tunnel' to where the bush thins out. Then break off left and up the hill. There is a very faint trail if you can find it, again there is a lot of dead fallen wood all over the place.
Anyway, we found the place! Here we are hanging out at the Three Star Threes area.
My first impressions were...not good. More like "we came all the way out here for this?". It's a pretty small poxy area out in the bush. But then we started climbing some things and I warmed up to it a bit.
The Prow, which you may know from the shot on the back cover of Sydney Bouldering guidebook, is a great problem. (BETA ALERT) Jump start to the obvious break, shuffle around, reach with your left hand to a very small and shallow pocket, then bump to a cool sloper. Heel hook optional, move the right hand to the poorer sloper to the right. Then punch for the top, and attmpt the airy mantle gracefully.
Minus goes for the pocket.
Me gaining the sloper. COVER SHOT TIME.
Heel hooks are always necessary.
Punch the lip and cut loose! Badass.
Then you have to mantle. It was a pretty brutal mantle. I'll hand it over to James.
James Demonstrates How Not To Mantle from Sam May on Vimeo.
After a pleasant ramble up the two slabs of Lost At Sea, the so- called 'multipitch boulder problem' we moved over to the scary, loose, and hard Underthingy. Even Simon didn't really get close so it's a bit harder than V3. Perhaps the problem was the weird face-out beta we tried instead of actually underclinging.
Time went by quickly and the others had to leave, so me and Simon headed over to Five Star Fives to check out Malpomene. Again my first impressions were not good. But what can I say - this poxy seeping micro-crag is definitely home to five star fives! Each problem we tried had awesome big moves that were just easy enough to make you feel good, that led to blank shutdown cruxes waaay off the deck.
(BETA ALERT) Malpomene: sick little roof, a jug and bad slopey crimp leads to a slap to the big rail. Match and heel hook, go for the perfectly-placed slot on the lip, and...go big somewhere on the utterly blank headwall. We got shut down and tried the orange scoop of Tomato Soup: the obvious natural line, big moves between horizontal slots, to a brutal iron-cross move left to a very poor horizontal, which shut us down. So we finally looked at the little line of pockets that is Catch The Bus To Bondi, good climbing left out the pockets (find the kneebar, it helps!) to a big jug, then up to a heinous pinch on the arete, which shut us down.
Lookin' stylish on the bus to bondi.
Grappling with the blunt arete.
So everyone left with plenty of potential projects. This area is exactly what it says on the tin - five star fives and three star threes! The bush surroundings are wild, feels a lot further away from the city than it is. I reckon next time though, we'll check out Above The Boat, a whole lot more rock, and the water views look very nice...
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