About fifteen years ago, I joined my mate Tony for a trip down to Mount Arapiles.
Arapiles is a mecca for climbers from across the world; it’s the best trad climbing location in Australia.
It’s a giant lump of rock that is reminiscent of Uluru. However, while Uluru is made of hyper-crumbly sandstone, Arapiles is made of granite-hard quartzite. And, while Uluru is out in the middle of the desert, Arapiles is bang in the middle of rural Victoria.
Anyway, we’d piled into Tony’s ute and headed down from Sydney to Arapiles; it was about a three day drive. Fortunately, Tony is always good company.
He’s an interesting guy; his dad was in the South Vietnamese Army in the early '70’s, which is why Tony’s earliest memories are of begging for food in an Indonesian refugee camp. Despite his background, Tony is one of the “Aussiest” people you’d ever meet; he’s very much an Australian bloke who just happens to be from Vietnam. In contrast, his wife Triet is very much a Vietnamese woman who just happens to live in Australia.
They’re both lovely folks.
Anyway; we made it down there eventually, and spent the first day doing an epic 300m multi-pitch route on the north face of Arapiles. This was a mistake; we both got so fried by the sun that we were completely incapacitated the next day. But after that, we had a few fun days doing easy short routes all over the place.
Then, on the last day, we decided to do one more epic. Unfortunately, the night before was something of a party at the campsite; both of us were sufficiently hungover the next day that climbing before midday was out of the question.
But, eventually, we dragged ourselves out of bed and over to the rock. The route we had planned was a giant chimney; the sort of climb when you spend the first hundred metres wedging yourself into a 1m x 1m featureless slot in the cliff face. No actual holds to grip onto, but that doesn’t matter when you can take advantage of the counter-pressure between two opposing walls; just push hard on both sides and wiggle your way up.
Anyway, we made it to the top of the first pitch, and were planning the second when we began to notice that it was rapidly becoming dark. We were on the southern face of the mountain, jammed into a chimney, and there was no chance in hell of making it to the top of the route before the light failed entirely. And, unfortunately, Tony had decided to leave his headtorch in the car in the interest of saving weight…
So, now we had a problem. Retreating down the mountain was no problem; it’s just a series of abseils. However, we only had one light; as soon as we split up, one of us would be blind, which makes the task of shifting from anchorman to abseiler somewhat perilous. Nobody likes trusting their life to knots tied by a blind man.
Eventually, we figured out a procedure where we could get all of the tricky ropework done in advance, at the cost of abandoning a few bits of anchor gear. So, we got the ropes sorted and Tony headed down with the headtorch while I belayed. But then it was my turn to descend…
As mentioned above, we’d got the ropes sorted out already. But I was still abseiling blind; I couldn’t see my feet. Because of this, I was continuously kicking rocks loose from the cliff face, which would then ricochet down the chimney to bounce off Tony’s helmet.
But that wasn’t the dramatic part.
Arapiles is quartzite, but it is quartzite with a high iron content. Every rock I kicked loose ricocheted down the chimney, striking sparks from the walls every time it hit. So, as I abseiled down a pitch-black 50m chimney, with a ludicrously bright strip of rural stars visible above me, I also had a collection of ever-changing spark constellations developing below me.
It was mindblowingly beautiful.
Which is why I associate that trip with this song:
