One of several frikken awesome climbing areas in Australia. Ancient sandstone cliffs, carved into fantastic shapes from aeons of wear. You can practically still hear the aboriginal didgeridoos.
A nice feature we found at the Blueys is that all the route names are painted unobtrusively at the bottom of the route; makes things VERY easy to find.
Interesting facts? Okay, here's one: the flies are SO BAD that it's a frikken hazard. If you're stuck on belay you need a third arm (or fourth, or fifth) to keep the flies from driving you mad. Even true local Aussie climbers have said that they've never gotten used to the flies, so if someone tells you that you will, they're lying. The don't bite, thank goodness--that's for the mosquitoes--but they do crawl all over your face, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, etc. Bug spray does NOT work, either. Good luck, kids.
Getting There
Drive west from Sydney for approximately one hour.
Converting from the Australian grading system to the Yosemite grading system can be found on the net but diffrerent sources often vary slightly. The conversion table from the most recently published guide book for the Blue Mtns. area is as follows: AUS : US 14 : 5.7 15 : 5.8 16 : 5.9- 17 : 5.9 18 : 5.9+ 19 : 5.10a/b 20 : 5.10c 21 : 5.10d 22 : 5.11a/b 23 : 5.11c 24 : 5.11d 25 : 5.12
Blue Mountains
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