The route
Milk Blood is a grade 23 (YDS mid-5.11, Brit E4) route in the Yesterday gully at Mount Arapiles, in Victoria, Australia. The line is a curving thin crack, but the crack is only used for protection; the route's style is sustained face climbing. Arapiles is a four kilometre wide quartzite lump rising incongruously out of the absolutely-flat farmland of the Wimmera plain. The Pines campground below the cliffs has been a fixture of Australian climbing for many decades. In the 1980s it was free; these days it costs AU$5 per night.
The context
From November 1985 to March 1986 I was almost constantly on the move. I took a bus from Kathmandu to Delhi. Visited Rajasthan by bus. Left Delhi for Mumbai by train. Toured south India by bus, train and backwater ferry. Flew from Mumbai to Jakarta. Visited obscure cliffs in central Java by bus and motorbike. Flew from Jakarta to Sydney. Took a bus from Sydney to Canberra. Finally: hitchhiked 1000km from Canberra to Melbourne to Arapiles. On arrival there I pitched my tent and barely moved for three months.
It seems strange now but, at that time, there were only a handful of places around the world where an itinerant rock climber could live in the dirt and be guaranteed to find climbing partners. Camp 4 in Yosemite had held that status for a while, along with a few other areas in North America (possibly including the base of the Chief in Squamish). In Europe, away from the classic alpine towns like Chamonix, rock climbing was still a very “local” sport. In Britain the climbing scene was essentially urban, revolving around a few distinct climbing towns; arguably it still is.
In the early 1980s, this mysterious Australian place, Arapiles, had appeared out of nowhere and seemingly overnight became an international destination. Mountain magazine anointed it “the best cliff in the world”. A big part of the Arapiles story was Kim Carrigan, who had pushed standards there several grades, then set off on a global tour, demonstrating that he was one of the best climbers around. In turn, big name European climbers came to Arapiles, especially Wolfgang Gullich, who established Punks in the Gym, one of the world’s first 8b+/ 5.14’s. Another attribute of Arapiles, that made it perfect for that period, when sport climbing had just emerged but was controversial and ill-defined, was that the cliff neatly straddled both worlds. Most of the routes are naturally-protected but the quartzite takes nuts so well that almost everything is really safe.
Inevitably, by the time people like me started showing up there, Arapiles’ moment at the cutting edge of climbing had already begin to pass. During my stay, the glamorous German climber, Stefan Glowacz, the Chris Sharma of the time, was there for a few weeks to repeat Punks in the Gym, but otherwise the campground was occupied by nobodies. I fitted right in.
When I arrived, the Australian summer was still in full operation. The ground was hard, barren and dusty. A hot wind blew through the campground as if from a giant hair dryer. By the time I left, rains were frequent, and the land greened over. Looking back, I can rationalise my period there as “just the autumn season ” but at the time it felt much longer. Long enough that I started to feel ownership.
The permanent campground population, perhaps thirty climbers in total, almost all male, self-organised around a number of groups that each shared a campfire. Very few of us had a car. About once a week, we would somehow find a ride to Horsham, 30km away, where we would do some laundry, take showers and buy our groceries. The rest of the time we would sit around the campground, stare into the fire, and talk climbing or big ideas about “life”, rarely based on any useful experience. We were detached from reality to an extent that is impossible in the internet+cellphone age. For a time, we all wore bathrobes, bought from a Horsham thrift store, which perfectly suited our leisured limbo state. The drug of choice was alcohol. For some, this had long since eclipsed climbing as their primary interest.
Every Friday evening, to our great resentment, convoys of weekend warriors would drive in from Melbourne. Once, memorably, a Kiwi climber, Mike, a man whose drink problem had become chronic, rose up half-naked to confront them, blocked their path magnificently silhouetted in headlights and issued this incoherent but unforgettable command: “Fuck off you bumbly bastards. You come here to masturbate in front of your Subaru's ....”. Unfortunately, he had nothing to add to this, so sat down; protest made but ineffective.
The only facilities in the campground were a payphone and a concrete toilet block, some distance from the tent sites, whose lights were always switched on. In the middle of one dark night, I ventured down there sleepily and inattentively, passed the outer doors and into a cubicle. Then I looked up and saw a moth perched on the cubicle wall near to me. Not a normal moth, but a monster at least the size of my hand, even with its wings furled. Then I saw another. And another. And realised the ceiling was covered in the things. I have a phobia of normal-sized moths, especially in flight, so this was a cue to end my business abruptly and leave.
I exited the cubicle as quietly as I could, only to discover that the entire toilet block was full of the things, covering almost every surface. It had the feel of the final scene of Hitchcock's "The Birds". Thankfully I managed to get back outside without disturbing them. No-one else in the campground had seen the moths at all. It seemed they had been attracted to the toilet block - the only bright light for many kilometers - during the night and had descended en masse. They were gone in the morning. Thanks to Google I now know they were "rain moths", a weird phenomenon specific to south Australia. Apparently they only live for 24 hours.
Another local animal was a regular fixture of campground life: the "stumpie" lizard. Cursed to be both entertainingly-shaped and slow-moving, stumpies were often abducted from sunny ledges under the cliff and brought back to camp to be subjected to various indignities. The stumpie-poking-out-from-trouser-fly was one classic, the stumpie-sandwich another.
One evening, someone spotted that there was a full moon coinciding with a clear sky. Apparently Pines' tradition required that a classic route, D Minor, on a detached tower, should be "convoy soloed" whenever these conditions occurred. About half the campground set off on this mission. Head torches were forbidden. The route is not very hard (Aus grade 13 - equivalent to 5.7 or Brit VS) but the crux is at a committing overhang 30 metres off the ground. Group banter kept the mood light for most of the way, but when I reached the steep section, the bubble burst temporarily and I had time to consider what a stupid way it would be to die. Over-gripping and adrenaline saw me through.
Of course, there was also plenty of opportunity for conventional daylight-hours climbing. Oddly we tended to squander that. Looking at the diary I averaged one route per day during my stay. This seems remarkably lazy now. I recall that there were a few complicating issues. One being a tradition of discussing options for the day for an extended period over breakfast, often including a renouncement of booze-fuelled ambitions stated the previous evening. Another was that we often headed out in a big group to a single objective, so there needed to be consensus. Also, as far as I recall, the concept of warming-up, whether on one route or several, had not yet evolved. Or if it had, no-one had told us.
Very gradually, once I had ticked a number of the easier Arapiles classics, I drifted into a mode of behaviour somewhat similar to modern "projecting". This was a new and very helpful experience for me. Back in Britain, it had been generally required that routes were attempted onsight and ground-up, unless on a new route, but here on the other side of the world, it seemed "working routes" was fine. Even more helpfully, the prevailing style was the now long-forgotten "yoyo" in which you are allowed to leave your rope clipped through the highest protection piece that you (our your partner) had placed, if necessary overnight.
The ascent
Milk Blood was my first grade 23 route but is also significant to me because it was my first real experience of a hard "project", learning moves and managing the pump. Success was satisfying but I was also surprised how engaging the process had been and how much I liked clinically-executed, rehearsed climbing compared to the spontaneous sketching-about which I was used to. Arguably it was the biggest inflection point in my climbing.
Unfortunately I remember very little about the actual ascent. I believe that I spent three days trying the route. Progress was steady but slow. I recall that an american girl, Karen, was my belayer and that some other friends were nearby, as two of them were attempting the harder Arapiles classic, Yesterday, so we would alternate climbing on Milk Blood and watching them. Not much else.
I had planned to fly onwards to the US after my Australia visa expired. I sometimes ponder a counter-factual version of my life, in which that happened, then I somehow stumbled over the beginnings of sport climbing at Smith Rock or American Fork, and my climbing continued to improve on the same trajectory. Instead I learned that my father was ill and flew back to Britain in July to be with him. I didn't climb anything substantially harder than Milk Blood for several years.
Subsequent ascents
I have returned to Arapiles once. In 2002 I was jobless but reasonably solvent. Leo was two years old. It seemed a good opportunity to travel. Shoko, Leo and I spent several months in Australia then Japan. We toured in a campervan from Sydney to Alice Springs via Melbourne and Adelaide, then flew to Queensland. A fantastic holiday. Along the way I negotiated two weeks at Arapiles.
Returning to the Pines after sixteen years was an odd experience. The passage of time had turned it into a mythic place in my mind. Unsurprisingly, it had changed. The campground had better facilities and seemed a lot cleaner. More people than in the 1980s but they looked wholesome and less neurotic. The gender ratio was much closer to parity. After a few days climbing with random partners picked up in the campground, I discovered another interesting detail: average climbing standards were lower! It was my first experience of a phenomenon now often talked about: that climbing gyms have created climbers who are stronger and more technically-proficient, but less comfortable when leading, and especially when leading trad routes, than the pre-gym generation. Bizarrely I found myself in demand as a rope-gun. Indirectly this led to me re-climbing Milk Blood. I was pleased to manage a "retro-onsight": couldn't remember the beta, didn't fall off.
During our 2002 visit, I was also delighted to find a stumpie. Naturally I brought it back to camp. There I learned another lesson in changed attitudes. In the new millenium, Pines campers didn't find it funny; in fact, it was suggested strongly that I return the lizard to where I had found it. Before doing that I thought that I should at least pose Leo with the stumpie for a photo. Unfortunately this act just cemented everyone's opinion of my idiocy as the stumpie proceeded to bite one of Leo's fingers and not let go. A true Jurassic Park moment, only resolved by pulling hard on the lizard. Considering the obvious comic-book precedents (Spiderman, etc), I assumed Leo would eventually acquire super-hero lizard powers because of this incident. So far the evidence is slight: in his mid-teens he was quite lethargic; he often has an extra heater switched on in his bedroom. Perhaps when he is older ...
Milk Blood is a grade 23 (YDS mid-5.11, Brit E4) route in the Yesterday gully at Mount Arapiles, in Victoria, Australia. The line is a curving thin crack, but the crack is only used for protection; the route's style is sustained face climbing. Arapiles is a four kilometre wide quartzite lump rising incongruously out of the absolutely-flat farmland of the Wimmera plain. The Pines campground below the cliffs has been a fixture of Australian climbing for many decades. In the 1980s it was free; these days it costs AU$5 per night.
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| Arapiles from the wheat fields |
From November 1985 to March 1986 I was almost constantly on the move. I took a bus from Kathmandu to Delhi. Visited Rajasthan by bus. Left Delhi for Mumbai by train. Toured south India by bus, train and backwater ferry. Flew from Mumbai to Jakarta. Visited obscure cliffs in central Java by bus and motorbike. Flew from Jakarta to Sydney. Took a bus from Sydney to Canberra. Finally: hitchhiked 1000km from Canberra to Melbourne to Arapiles. On arrival there I pitched my tent and barely moved for three months.
It seems strange now but, at that time, there were only a handful of places around the world where an itinerant rock climber could live in the dirt and be guaranteed to find climbing partners. Camp 4 in Yosemite had held that status for a while, along with a few other areas in North America (possibly including the base of the Chief in Squamish). In Europe, away from the classic alpine towns like Chamonix, rock climbing was still a very “local” sport. In Britain the climbing scene was essentially urban, revolving around a few distinct climbing towns; arguably it still is.
In the early 1980s, this mysterious Australian place, Arapiles, had appeared out of nowhere and seemingly overnight became an international destination. Mountain magazine anointed it “the best cliff in the world”. A big part of the Arapiles story was Kim Carrigan, who had pushed standards there several grades, then set off on a global tour, demonstrating that he was one of the best climbers around. In turn, big name European climbers came to Arapiles, especially Wolfgang Gullich, who established Punks in the Gym, one of the world’s first 8b+/ 5.14’s. Another attribute of Arapiles, that made it perfect for that period, when sport climbing had just emerged but was controversial and ill-defined, was that the cliff neatly straddled both worlds. Most of the routes are naturally-protected but the quartzite takes nuts so well that almost everything is really safe.
Inevitably, by the time people like me started showing up there, Arapiles’ moment at the cutting edge of climbing had already begin to pass. During my stay, the glamorous German climber, Stefan Glowacz, the Chris Sharma of the time, was there for a few weeks to repeat Punks in the Gym, but otherwise the campground was occupied by nobodies. I fitted right in.
 |
| The only surviving photo from my first Australia trip At Frog Buttress campground, June 1986. Hiro, Pete and I. |
The permanent campground population, perhaps thirty climbers in total, almost all male, self-organised around a number of groups that each shared a campfire. Very few of us had a car. About once a week, we would somehow find a ride to Horsham, 30km away, where we would do some laundry, take showers and buy our groceries. The rest of the time we would sit around the campground, stare into the fire, and talk climbing or big ideas about “life”, rarely based on any useful experience. We were detached from reality to an extent that is impossible in the internet+cellphone age. For a time, we all wore bathrobes, bought from a Horsham thrift store, which perfectly suited our leisured limbo state. The drug of choice was alcohol. For some, this had long since eclipsed climbing as their primary interest.
Every Friday evening, to our great resentment, convoys of weekend warriors would drive in from Melbourne. Once, memorably, a Kiwi climber, Mike, a man whose drink problem had become chronic, rose up half-naked to confront them, blocked their path magnificently silhouetted in headlights and issued this incoherent but unforgettable command: “Fuck off you bumbly bastards. You come here to masturbate in front of your Subaru's ....”. Unfortunately, he had nothing to add to this, so sat down; protest made but ineffective.
The only facilities in the campground were a payphone and a concrete toilet block, some distance from the tent sites, whose lights were always switched on. In the middle of one dark night, I ventured down there sleepily and inattentively, passed the outer doors and into a cubicle. Then I looked up and saw a moth perched on the cubicle wall near to me. Not a normal moth, but a monster at least the size of my hand, even with its wings furled. Then I saw another. And another. And realised the ceiling was covered in the things. I have a phobia of normal-sized moths, especially in flight, so this was a cue to end my business abruptly and leave.
I exited the cubicle as quietly as I could, only to discover that the entire toilet block was full of the things, covering almost every surface. It had the feel of the final scene of Hitchcock's "The Birds". Thankfully I managed to get back outside without disturbing them. No-one else in the campground had seen the moths at all. It seemed they had been attracted to the toilet block - the only bright light for many kilometers - during the night and had descended en masse. They were gone in the morning. Thanks to Google I now know they were "rain moths", a weird phenomenon specific to south Australia. Apparently they only live for 24 hours.
Another local animal was a regular fixture of campground life: the "stumpie" lizard. Cursed to be both entertainingly-shaped and slow-moving, stumpies were often abducted from sunny ledges under the cliff and brought back to camp to be subjected to various indignities. The stumpie-poking-out-from-trouser-fly was one classic, the stumpie-sandwich another.
 |
| Stumpie abuse © Glenn Tempest/ Alpinist |
Of course, there was also plenty of opportunity for conventional daylight-hours climbing. Oddly we tended to squander that. Looking at the diary I averaged one route per day during my stay. This seems remarkably lazy now. I recall that there were a few complicating issues. One being a tradition of discussing options for the day for an extended period over breakfast, often including a renouncement of booze-fuelled ambitions stated the previous evening. Another was that we often headed out in a big group to a single objective, so there needed to be consensus. Also, as far as I recall, the concept of warming-up, whether on one route or several, had not yet evolved. Or if it had, no-one had told us.
Very gradually, once I had ticked a number of the easier Arapiles classics, I drifted into a mode of behaviour somewhat similar to modern "projecting". This was a new and very helpful experience for me. Back in Britain, it had been generally required that routes were attempted onsight and ground-up, unless on a new route, but here on the other side of the world, it seemed "working routes" was fine. Even more helpfully, the prevailing style was the now long-forgotten "yoyo" in which you are allowed to leave your rope clipped through the highest protection piece that you (our your partner) had placed, if necessary overnight.
The ascent
Milk Blood was my first grade 23 route but is also significant to me because it was my first real experience of a hard "project", learning moves and managing the pump. Success was satisfying but I was also surprised how engaging the process had been and how much I liked clinically-executed, rehearsed climbing compared to the spontaneous sketching-about which I was used to. Arguably it was the biggest inflection point in my climbing.
Unfortunately I remember very little about the actual ascent. I believe that I spent three days trying the route. Progress was steady but slow. I recall that an american girl, Karen, was my belayer and that some other friends were nearby, as two of them were attempting the harder Arapiles classic, Yesterday, so we would alternate climbing on Milk Blood and watching them. Not much else.
I had planned to fly onwards to the US after my Australia visa expired. I sometimes ponder a counter-factual version of my life, in which that happened, then I somehow stumbled over the beginnings of sport climbing at Smith Rock or American Fork, and my climbing continued to improve on the same trajectory. Instead I learned that my father was ill and flew back to Britain in July to be with him. I didn't climb anything substantially harder than Milk Blood for several years.
Subsequent ascents
I have returned to Arapiles once. In 2002 I was jobless but reasonably solvent. Leo was two years old. It seemed a good opportunity to travel. Shoko, Leo and I spent several months in Australia then Japan. We toured in a campervan from Sydney to Alice Springs via Melbourne and Adelaide, then flew to Queensland. A fantastic holiday. Along the way I negotiated two weeks at Arapiles.
Returning to the Pines after sixteen years was an odd experience. The passage of time had turned it into a mythic place in my mind. Unsurprisingly, it had changed. The campground had better facilities and seemed a lot cleaner. More people than in the 1980s but they looked wholesome and less neurotic. The gender ratio was much closer to parity. After a few days climbing with random partners picked up in the campground, I discovered another interesting detail: average climbing standards were lower! It was my first experience of a phenomenon now often talked about: that climbing gyms have created climbers who are stronger and more technically-proficient, but less comfortable when leading, and especially when leading trad routes, than the pre-gym generation. Bizarrely I found myself in demand as a rope-gun. Indirectly this led to me re-climbing Milk Blood. I was pleased to manage a "retro-onsight": couldn't remember the beta, didn't fall off.
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| #vanlife #marsupial |
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| Leo at the wheel |
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| Leo exploring the Pines on foot |
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| No photos exist of either of my Milk Blood ascents. Instead, this is me on the uber-classic Kachoong in 2002 |
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| The stumpie that bit Leo |
