Hi all,

The Candlestick has been on my list of things to do for a while and with the days getting shorter and cooler in a hurry I feel like I need to pull my finger out and get it done before the season is over.

I'm in Launceston, so I've been watching the swell forecast closely to try to pick a good day to head down there. Can anyone who's done it before suggest how much swell is too much to make it accessible, and if swell from any particular direction is favourable?

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17 Comments

  1. dave james

    northerly winds are important to flatten swell. ie swell 1.8m being pushed offshore worked for me once.  even small swell  ie 1.5m onshore could mess you up. If i saw northwesterly winds and swell less than 2m i would goat for it. The swim is pretty awesome. i say its best if both climbers do the swim and its less messing around. Others would disagree.

    Word on the street is if you rap on a  70m rope then it is possible to take only two ropes. ie swim across with tail end of 70m rope. Climb on second rope, taking tail end of 70m rope up with u and attach to bolts on big ledge for your tyrolean. I haven't done this as i have never had a 70 m rope. i just tied a third rope on.

     its a grand adventure.

    best o luck.

  2. Cameron McKenzie

    We managed to fix a 60m rope to the mainland and drag that up while climbing on double ropes (we did the grade 18 route to the left of the original route if you're looking from land). It required a bit of shenanigans on the third pitch at the start (we ended up climbing the first bit and then pulling up the trail line), but it's certainly doable on a 60m, so definitely doable on a 70m.

  3. Scott AUTHOR

    Thanks guys. I haven't been out to Cape Hauy yet so I'm still trying to visualize all the logistics in my head.

    So a 60m rope fixed to the rap anchors on the mainland won't quite reach across to the base of the Candlestick without attaching another rope to tow it across with? I have a 60m 9mm static that I was hoping to fix and use as the rap/tyrolean line, then just use a 60m single rope as the lead line. The static would also be a good rope to jumar on if we got the bottom and decided the swim wasn't a goer and needed to bail upwards.

    Would it make sense to take a short length (15 m or so) of tag line to attach to the end of the abseil rope?

    1. Cameron McKenzie

      The 60m fixed to the mainland will make it all the way across to the base of the Candlestick (it did for us anyway!). There's just a bit on the third pitch where you are around an arete for 5m or so and the rope can get stuck there. We just fixed the rope to the third belay, the leader climbed up 5m or so to a ledge, made themselves safe and then dropped one of the lead lines are pulled the rap rope up. Once you get there it's pretty obvious what needs to be done.

      So, if you were happy to lead on a single rope (keeping in mind that there's some big loose blocks!), you could get by with two 60m ropes.

  4. rpc

    Can confirm that the two 70 meter rope approach as described above works (the "upper tyrolean" is pretty lively for the 2nd person) for the Normal.  Swim was the highlight but 3 of the 4 pitches of the Normal were very good too we thought - the whole outing was such a memorable package.

  5. Scott AUTHOR

    One more question for those in the know - If whoever leads the swim sets up up a tryolean at the bottom so that the rest of the party can avoid getting wet, do you need to swing across to the Totem pole and use the bolts at the base of the free route, or are there other bolts somewhere at the bottom of the cliff on the mainland side?

    1. Cameron McKenzie

      There are bolts on both a ledge at the base of the rap (not on the Tote) and on a ledge at the base of the grade 18 route on the Candlestick. You may need to leave biners behind, can't remember.

      1. rpc

        I guess we also did the "18" thinking it was the Normal (smile)  (my bad)

  6. Scott AUTHOR

    Awesome. Thanks guys. Forecast this sunday is dry with 1.5-2 m SSW swell and light NW wind. Sounds like it might be worth a crack.

  7. Scott AUTHOR

    So, I'm still confused about bolts. Are there bolts at the base of the normal route and the 18? Or just at the base of the 18? If there are no bolts at the base of the normal route presumably its possible to build a good anchor there with gear in order to set up the tryolean across from the mainland?

    1. Cameron McKenzie

      I haven't done the normal route so I'm not sure, but I don't think there are bolts at the bottom. I would presume there's gear, but I'm not sure. I also don't know whether a 60m rap line will be able to be tagged over to the base of the normal route as from memory it's a bit further away from shore.

  8. dave james

    i don't think you could swim over with the bottom end  of a 60m rope used to abseil to the regular/normal route ( to the 18 route this would seem reasonable though i haven't done it). Its a longer swim to the regular route and less direct- you kinda swim around the Tote to get to a spot where you can  scramble out onto a large ledge at the base of the regular route. which is more or less  a few metres above the water. maybe a 20m swim  or thereabouts.  You can see this ledge from the mainland side. its not complicated. rap off mainland. turn around jump in water and swim around to the right, preferably with out getting smashed against the tote. great fun. 

    I think there are some bolts at the base of the grade 18 route which seem to lead people astray.

    last time i did the regular route there were no bolts at the base of the regular route... although i think it was 2011...

    yeah gear fine if you want to do a lower tyrolean. a nut and a #2bd cam  but i have been doing a few altzheimers ascents lately.crusty.

     

     

  9. dave james

    how did you go on the candlestick scott? conditions were pretty good by the looks of things...

  10. Scott AUTHOR

    We did it. We climbed the original route and it was a very excellent adventure. The swim was fine. The swell was probably about 1.5 m from the south. We waited on the mainland ledge and watched the waves for about 15 minutes to try to work out the timing between sets. There were some big ones coming through every few minutes but I managed to get to the ledge during a lull and set up a tryrolean for the others to come across. Brendan got soaked by a big wave on the way over, which was pretty funny. 

     

    We managed to get our rope stuck when we tried to retrieve the upper Tyrolean though. No amount of pulling could get the last bit of tail through the anchors on the far side.We didn't want to leave it spanning the gap where it might have fooled someone into thinking it was fixed so in the end we had to cut it. So there is now about 30m of static rope hanging from the bolt anchors on the candlestick. I don't like leaving mess all over place and I am keen to go back and climb the other route as well, but realistically it's unlikely that I'll be able to get back there for a while. So any booty hunters that are willing to make the effort to get it are welcome to keep it. 

  11. dave james

    haha! well done sounds like a standard day on the candlestick! first time i went there i watched a mate disappear in a wall of white water on the lower tyrolean. quite memorable...

    i might be down there at easter.

  12. Scott AUTHOR

    Just a couple of notes on the bolt anchors - 

    The guide on Thesarvo mentions the rap bolts at the top of the last pitch, and the bolts on the big ledge 30 m or so from the top, and seems to suggest that the usual escape option would be a Tyrolean from the big ledge. I guess this would work, but you would be traversing at a pretty steep downwards angle back to the mainland, so you would definitely need plenty of slack in the system and prussics or a belay device on the rope to stop an uncontrolled high speed slide and splat against the other side. There are also some newish looking ring bolts about 30 m lower again, at the top of pitch 2 of the original route. These bolts are roughly level with the top of the Tote and are at about the same height as the rap bolts on the mainland. This is where we set up the Tyrolean from to get back across. We only found them because we climbed the original route. If we had come up the northern route we probably would have never known they were there. Maybe they were placed recently by the slacklining crew??? The tyrolean from this spot worked well, except that the position of the anchors means that the rope rubs on an arete, so a rope protector of some sort is a very good idea. We had one, but under pressure with the fading light we screwed up at the end and attached it to the wrong strand, which is probably why the tail of our rope got jammed when we tried to retrieve it.

    The rap bolts at the top and the bolts on the big ledge had old steel screw gates on them which are very rusty. We didn't trust them, but the gates were too corroded to get them off. We managed to fit some small biners through the hangers beside the rusty steel biners and left them behind. If anyone feels like lugging a hacksaw or cordless grinder up there they could remove the dodgy rusted biners. 

    Anyway - We had a blast. Its a fantastic day out. Thoroughly recommended!  

  13. Brendan Heywood

    Has anyone done the crack on the mainland directly where you rap off the totem pole rings down to the ledge at the base? It looks like a decent crack climb, I'd guess around grade 18-20 with fist crack off the ledge thinning to hands and fingers at the top and maybe something harder about half way up. It seems improbably that no-one has done it.