Once upon a time in a place far away (if you live in Europe) two great giants from Austria and Switzerland fought for the title of King of Mount Stapylton. Our story begins with the arrival of Lord Klem of Loskot and his diminutive page Toni of Lamprecht who led an invasion of the mount, slaying roof after roof and taming the most viscous of dynos. The pinnacle of this assault being an ascent of a 20m link in the Hollow mountain cave called Cave Rave and a 5 move power fest called Ammagamma, both graded V14! So impressed with this area they claimed it "as good as Fontainebleau", a fact that would later come back to haunt them.

Meanwhile in the small kingdom of Switzerland the Lord of Crimp himself, a bushy haired fiend known simply as Fred, sat on his Metolius cordura throne and hatched a plan. To topple his arch rival Lord Klem. His sole mission to repeat everything and leave a few horrors of his own. This he did with quick repeats (including some V10/11 flashes!) and 1^st ascents of Sleepy Hollow (V12/13) which had repulsed Lord Klem. Not only did he repeat Ammagamma in 3 hours and downgrade it to V13 but he was even cheeky enough to add a variant finish to Cave Rave (cries of different victory jugs were rife) which he named Eve Rave and graded hard V14. Now now boys.

And the rest as they say is history. Once again two Europeans have kicked local ass leaving great world class bouldering in their wake. At least it’ll keep the rest of us busy for a decade or two. Even as we go to press the locals are ticking there way through the V9/10’s with a few repeats of V11/12’s and the recent 3^rd ascent of Ammagamma by Nowra local boy Paul Westwood.

Mount Stapylton is situated in the Grampians mountain range and is home to some of the world’s steepest and most orange bouldering. The boulders are pretty spectacular with some of the biggest roofs and steepest wall’s I’ve ever seen. Make sure your toes and heels are coated in the finest rubber available as you’ll be hooking, scumming and dragging them to keep you horizontal or you’ll look like a 60kg pendulum hanging by its fingertips. There aren’t a huge amount of problems here (about 200) and the areas are spread about with some truly thigh challenging walk-ins, but the quality of the rock and problems more than make up for this. What we have here is a great bouldering area in about as atmospheric a place as any with Kangaroos to boot!

Thanks to Nic, Nathan, Jaq, Chris, Dave, Stefan, the Canadians, Mike, Kirolee, Oscar, Matt and anyone else who helped me out.