When Arapiles was the Centre of the World
“Between 1975 and 1985, the hardest grade at Arapiles (and in Australia) jumped from 22 to 32, from where it’s barely budged since.”
Mount Arapiles is golden, in my mind at least, with walls of beautiful orange sandstone rising above the flat fields of Victoria’s Wimmera. There’s a holiday atmosphere of excitement and possibility; the campsite is filled with the music of magpies and trad climbing racks. And it’s in the middle of nowhere, with crap phone reception, so you can forget the rest of your life and pretend that it’s all this simple.
That’s without mentioning the awesome, diverse, user-friendly climbing: more than 3,000 routes over 3.5km of cliffline, with three-star classics ranging from doddles to desperate, from 20m pumpfests to 120m adventures. With minimal walk-ins, solid rock, and great natural pro, it’s often called ‘the best crag in the world’.
But before the Araps of today, there was an earlier version, where sheep grazed to the edge of the rock, a rifle range adorned the base of one cliff, and the Pines was a foreboding thicket rather than today’s open, soft-needled campsite. This Araps was populated by ‘old fossils’ and ‘beard strokers’—people like Peter Jackson, Bob and Steve Craddock, Mike Stone, and Chris Baxter (later to become Wild’s Founding Editor)—who’d drive five hours from Melbourne to climb crack lines, chimneys, and corners where they could whack in pitons and aid the hard moves. Slings were the main protection, footwear was thick-soled boots, and the leader ‘never fell’—without gear, harnesses, and other modern essentials, it’s obvious why.
Between that Arapiles and ours, there’s 60 years or so of actual time. Each decade since holds drama, intrigue, romance, comedy, challenge, adversity, and tragedy, with each doing its bit to transform Arapiles. But one decade stands out to me—that starting from 1975. Between that year and 1985, the hardest grade at Arapiles (and in Australia) jumped from 22 to 32, from where it’s barely budged since. The number of climbs exploded, too: The 1978 guide listed 540 climbs; five years later, there were 1,300. I’m too young to have been there then,
