Photos from a spectacular summer’s day out climbing at Waitpinga, South Australia.
Cephalopod wall at Waitpinga is a fairly unique slab climbing area with, sport, mixed and trad routes ranging in difficulty from grade 9 to 25. There are a few multipitch routes that take you very high above the crashing waves below (a 70m rope is advantageous). There is another area called Mollusc wall that we did not visit on this particular day. Timing your visit with the tides and swell is important! We had a fairly marginal day where a few people got wet, however there have been trips here where belayers have gotten knocked off their feet by king waves, and lost their bags to the ocean.
Climbing up one of the routes to take some photos from the anchor gave a good sense for how much our presence was at temporary permission of the ocean!
Nicole Anderson soaks up the exposure on ‘Magic Mountain’ (13)
A climber runs to avoid the waves…
…but is too late to avoid getting soaked!