Go back to South And Western Australia Trip.
Having left the boys in the care of my mom and brother, we set off for our third Australia trip in the predawn hours of day one. A quick layover in Auckland and a bit of waiting at Adelaide airport for our rental car to be readied and soon enough we were on the road heading north into the interior of the continent. Despite the long series of fights, we were surprisingly lucid during our 5 hour drive to Hawker, a hamlet with a population of about 200 and the logical basecamp for Moonarie.
Reasonably early start the following morning and a 30ish minute drive to Moonarie; going extra slowly to avoid any collisions with the local fauna. Moonarie is a ~100 meter tall escarpment with the walls forming a cirque. It’s part of a larger formation known as the Wilpena Pound which looks like a meteor crater (but is not) and lies within the Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park.
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The goal for day one was a 4-pitch classic called Pagoda rated Australian 17. A photo of a climber on the second pitch of this route was a big reason for us going there. Looking up from the trailhead, the cliffs look painfully far away. However, the hike up is on a nice climbers’ trail and goes by quickly (about an hour). There’s a sweet backcountry, climbers’ campsite at the base of the walls complete with some cooking hardware and even a water tank.
Pagoda turned out to be as enjoyable as it looked: a scrambly pitch one; a very cool pitch two featuring a rising traverse on and up onto a flake; fun face/crack climbing on pitch 3; and a clean exit pitch. A couple hundred meters of hiking along the flat cliff top brought us to the descent gully and soon enough we were back at the campsite. Given that we did not see a soul since leaving the highway in the morning, we decided to leave our packs at the campsite for next day’s climbing.
Photos
Go to Moonarie Day Two.
Go back to South And Western Australia Trip.