GIRL BETA

This summer, instead of hiking the high ranges in Colorado and bouldering the new areas in Rocky Mountain National Park, I traveled to Australia to spend time with my family. I was fortunate enough to compete in the Queensland Bouldering Championships as well as bouldering in my local area in Townsville. One thing I have to say is that the climbing scene in North East Queensland seems to be a bit exclusive and access is tough. The only way I was able to get to the area was by going with the University of Queensland climbing club. This crew is based out of Brisbane, which is about an 18 hour drive to Townsville. So I want to thank Dan, Johnny, Tina, Jeff and others of the crew for showing me the local problems.

Harvey’s Marbles is filled with rounded boulders of granite rock, with sharp crystal edges. Steve Baskerville was responsible for developing this area, and other area’s in the North East Queensland region. The boulders are relatively close together, allowing for many problems to be done in a day. Since my skill level was not up to par, I decided to have some fun on the classic V3′s of the area. There is a nice V7 called Butt Crack Left (don’t be fooled by the name..), and Arc V6/V7 which is the slopey extension version of Fall from Grace. I only got to see a small part of Harvey’s Marbles, which apparently has over 500 problems in the area. 8a only shows about 230 problems, but the locals assure me that there is so much to be established here.

Here is a short video of some of the terrain and easier boulder problems at Harvey’s Marbles. I gave Fall from Grace a V3 grade. It is rated V2 in the guidebook, but feels like V4 maybe even V5 to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 10:33 pm and is filed under International Bouldering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.