NeverSayNever

Update: 10 June 2017 - hard to believe that it has been some 12 years since Bryan and I climbed this line. Suprised and excilarated to see that it is still there waiting. Never Say Never is one of those 'old school' lines with a few old carrot bolts here and there and a little bit of natural pro for good measure. Descriptions in the new guide books are sparse but I took some fresh photos from a recent trip to climb Yak Banquet which show the line shimmering in the early morining sun. Then on Wednesday Bryan managed to tear the long head biceps from his bone while climbing in the gym.

Never Say Never - Direct (20) Grose Valley, Perry’s Lookdown

On Saturday the 20th of February 2005, Bryan and Roman climbed a new variation of this almost all natural multi-pitch classic. Below is a route description of the original 4 pitch climb with an additional two new pitches add ed to the bottom of the route, which extends the climb all the way to the bottom of the Grose valley with an excellent first and mediocre second pitch. The original Never Say Never has two bolts at the second to last pitch of the climb and all belays are made from either double bolt runners or tree belays. We started rapping the route about 10:30 after push-bashing for a few minutes from Perry’s lookdown car park. The route is located about 100 meters after Mike Law’s Red Edge and is described in sufficient detail in the latest guidebook. There are however a few short-comings in the guidebook. First of all when the guidebook mentions “fix” a rope then this means you will have to leave it there as a backup. To complete this climb you need an absolute minimum of 3 ropes. You can fix the first 50m rap through some very serious jungle and two steep (irreversible) drops and leave the rope for jumaring up later. This is a very serious jumar on two steep but short walls with lots of slime on it. From here on you can use your remaining double 60 meter ropes to reach the ground in two raps. It is safer to also fix the second rap with another 50 meter rope and than use double 60m ropes for a rap straight to the ground past original pitch one and two. This safer variation requires 4 ropes all together. Unfortunately we only had 2 ropes and that got us into lots of trouble.

RAP description:

Rap through serious jungle 50 meters to forked tree where the actual climb begins (definitely fix rope here or there will be hell to pay, read below). Second rap to corner with double carrots hidden around corner. (You can pull your double rope here or fix your 4th one as you wish.) If you have double sixty meter ropes they will reach to the ground from here past two pitches. Alternatively you can rap a short 15 meter corner pitch to a short ledge and then rap to the ground from here. The first pitch is a solid 40 meters long so a 50 meter rope won’t do. We discovered this the hard way but luckily two guys from Canberra let us use there twin 60m’s to rap to the bottom.

Once we got to the bottom I discovered that we weren't truly at the bottom. That wasn't good enough – it's only 4 pitches to the top – so I decided to check out what’s below. At the start of the climb walk 10 meters to the left (facing the Grose) and put an anchor on the huge singular tree, rap one short pitch to another tree on a ledge (10m). Use this second conspicuous tree to rap a full rope length to the real bottom of the Grose. You need double ropes if you want to rap right to the bottom here. These last two raps are a worthwhile extension to the original Never Say Never. The grades are consistent with the overall route and both pitches are all natural climbed by Bryan Cummings and Roman Rosenbaum on the 19th of February 2005. We have called this extension Never Say Never-Direct in honor of the first ascentionist's name of the climb.

Route description:

Pitch1 (Grade 20) The start of the new pitch one is at the back of a huge 5 meter deep cave. Climb the short crack on the right side of the back of the cave and traverse out to the lip of the cave. This joins a magnificent 25 meter corner crack that is slightly overhanging and changes to less than vertical. This new pitch is a fantastic 3 star natural addition to the original line.
Pitch 2 (Grade 17)
Back on the tree belay for the first pitch climb a short crack on the left of the terrace and avoid the upper choss by climbing out on the arête at the right. Short but sweet, and a nice warm-up for the business pitch of the climb.
Pitch 3 (Grade 20)
This is the business and probably the hardest grade 20 corner crack I have climbed in the mountains. It is an absolute beauty 40 meter relentlessly overhanging all natural corner crack. It has a serious crux with a little roof in it that made my head spin. I felt like vomiting when I passed the crux and had to slow right down to finish this pitch alive. Temperature must have been close to 40 degrees Celsius and we only had 2 liters between the two of us. I ended up sucking the hell out of a wire placement to produce saliva for my glued shut mouth. The flies had a field day on our blood but that was nothing compared to what we had to face on the last pitch.
Pitch 4 (Grade 17)
A nice shady all natural corner crack, only about 15 meters long with a nice double carrot anchor at the top to cool the nerves and recover from the last pitch.
Pitch 5 (Grade 19)
Starts around the corner with a tricky corner system that leads to an arête and fantastic Grose valley exposure over a mighty roof. This is jug-haul material and very enjoyable climbing especially because this is where the first carrot of the route appears.
Pitch 6 (Grade 17)
This short pitch can be linked with the previous one on a 60 meter rope. There is one more bolt on this last pitch and you end up back at the forked tree from where you started.
Pitch 7 (Grade #%$#&)
I you haven’t fixed a rope for retreat like we did because we scammed a rappel from a party below us than you are in for one hell of a ride. The next 20 meters of mud infested vertical swamp will make you curse in pain. After the bush flies have sucked your blood and branches have scratched your flesh to bits you arrive at the worst looking peace of choss you have ever seen ANYWHERE. There is no way around this unless you have fixed a rope before and we didn’t. What followed was a final 10 meters of climbing over crumbling mud with slings around suspect branches from non-existing trees while tunneling through vertical forests. You felt like a worm tunneling through warm mud from choss to tree back to choss topped with torrential rain that muddied our filthy bodies.
I think you get the idea – fix a rope here or burn in hell.

We topped out in a thunderstorm at 17:30PM after about 6 hours of continuous climbing. After we skulled the liter of water (leave two additional water-bottles behind at the belay stations on this climb in summer) we had stashed at the top, we limbed a short distance back to the car for a beer at the Blackheath pub. What a mega-classic!

Roman (Pictures will come next time we do it in better style.)