Sunburnt Buttress - The History

By Neil Monteith

The idea for a long, modern route in the Glasshouse Mountains stemmed from my attempts at organising the filming of Tim Balla's Lost Boys on Mt Warning in 1996. This project eventually fell apart, but not before I had hiked up with 30kg of water and abseiled down Mt Warning to get a feel for the route. This huge wall, with very little natural features reminded me a lot of the Glasshouses so I left feeling a need to explore some of the larger areas on the Sunshine Coast so I could possibly do my own route. At the time, I was into the initial development of Shadow Glen on Mt Tibrogargan but was having problems finding enthusiastic partners to climb with.

I purchased a hand drill, and began some exploratory ground-up routes on the far left of Kangaroo Point. These routes up chossy dirt covered slopes, would prove to be important training for the climbing of the nasty third pitch of Sunburnt Buttress. Next, I took a day trip by myself to Mt Beerwah, determined that its huge open slabs on the north side would produce a good multi-pitch route. I self-belayed my way up what was to become Gun Control in April 1996 placing some of the most cosmetic bolts ever to be placed in Queensland. On the second pitch I was running it out up an easy slab, and hammered in a two centimetre deep carrot into the soft rock, and clipped this absurdity as my only piece of gear on the pitch. On that day I managed to link six new pitches together and summit, producing one of the first new long routes to be done in the Glasshouses for quite some time. I was, however, discouraged by the easy nature of the climbing and the shocking quality of the rock. I wouldn't find my bigwall route on Beerwah. Next, was the establishment of The Digital Revolution and Adrenaline Gives Me Gas in the overhangs on top of Tibrogargan. The bolting of these routes turned out to be mini epics in themselves. On one occasion, when I was super hyped I got up at 3am, drove from Brisbane to Tibrogargan, walked up the tourist track, hand drilled four bolts in Adrenaline and returned to Brisbane so I could arrive at work at 9am! Whilst I was messing around in the overhangs and also developing more routes at Shadow Glen, I became aware of the obvious clean buttress on the Northeast shoulder of Tibro. From the road, I mapped out a possible direct line, without ledges or vegetation from Shadow Glen all the way up to North Shoulder. So, sometime around September 1996 I loaded my pack and hiked up the familiar west face route to begin my reconnaissance of the wall. I placed a large chain anchor and rapped off the steepest section I could find, the fifth pitch, and was excited by the good rock. I laboured in the heat placing two more bolts by hand, each taking about forty minutes to drill, and rapped off again down the forth pitch. This pitch looked steep and good but what lay below looked terrible. Blocks of death hung everywhere and the rock was crumbling in my hands. I worked out a possible line traversing in from the right and felt it was possible to link the wall together into a route. I had run out of bolts and energy so I jugged back up my fixed lines and retired back home.

Above: The Northeast shoulder of Tibrogargan, host of Sunburnt Buttress.

Several weeks later, Marten Blumen and I were working Adrenaline Gives Me Gas and we decided to descend via my possible new route. I only had two bolts and a manky sling, so I hoped that one more rap would get us near the large ledge with a tree below the third pitch belay. This was committing since we would have to pull the ropes down two abseils, before we could see if it reached. We rapped down to my low point, I kept my head together, not breaking my drill bit and placed another twin bolt anchor and threaded the manky sling through the hangers and rapped off into space. The rock looked worse than I remembered it, and I was gripped as the rope slid across a wall of choss far above my head. Luckily, the rope reached the vegetated ledge, and the ropes pulled through the sling anchor. A short scramble and a rap off a tree got us to the ground as darkness set in. I was so thankful that everything went smoothly, the thought of trying to escape off the route if our ropes got stuck did not bare thinking about. The face was completely without cracks - loose and sustained. Both Marty and I agreed that the route would require massive bolting and so the route was put onto the backburner for the next four years. I do not own a powerdrill so the thought of placing fifty or so bolts was unthinkable in the heat of Tibrogargan. As the years progressed I imagined the face to be worse and worse, telling everyone that it was utter death to go near it. 

The years flew by, and I was blessed with fantastic climbing trips around Australia and the world, which opened my eyes to bigger and greater things. During my six months in the USA in 1999 I began to feel a huge need to go and do some new routes. I had been enjoying the myriad multipitch alpine rock classics that places like Colorado are renowned for. It was only after climbing a six-pitch sport route in the Black Velvet Canyon in Red Rocks, Nevada that I began to think about a bolted multi-pitch new route. As any keen newrouter will attest too, it becomes really addictive, and soon every spare moment of my time was taken thinking about things to do when I got back to Australia. I eventually began to think about the partially bolted multipitch route I had abandoned on Tibrogargan all those years before. I began to sketch out on paper the possible pitches and gear required for this route. Amazingly, after having been away from it for so long, I guessed almost exactly the bolt requirements and pitch lengths.

With an ever-increasing desire for climbing, I returned to the hot stinking delights of Queensland in January 2000. I realised it was not going to be possible to climb Sunburnt Buttress at this time since it was scorching from 5am to about 7pm so my plans changed and I headed south with Aaron Jones for two months, climbing in the Blue Mountains, Nowra, Buffalo, Arapiles and the Grampians. After completing, with speed, many classic multipitches on the trip I began to discuss the possibility of Sunburnt with Aaron. I was still not sure if it was going to be a big pile of rubbish or a quality route. My mind was hazy on the details, but on return to Brisbane Aaron and I headed up the west face of Tibro and re-rapped back down the anchors that I had placed three years before. To my surprise the wall looked much better than I remembered, and after replacing the manky tat on the forth pitch with a few booty biners we made it to the ground. The third pitch traverse still looked horrible but the rest looked possible. I was willing to turn the third pitch into an aid bolt ladder if required. For the first time I paid attention to the first couple of pitches and was delighted to find a good clean slab rising from just left of the Suburban Sprawl pillar on Shadow Glen.

Because of the large amount of bolts that were obviously required, I switched to the mode of a construction worker. I had to really plan how to rig and cost effectively bolt this six-pitch monster, so I sat down and did some figures. I decided I would like to make it into a route that was accessible, but did not have a large quantity of obvious shiny hangers. I refuse to place hammer-in carrot bolts, but was still keen to use the good Australian technique of the hangerless machine bolt. My final decision was to place glue-in machine bolts and on the traverse sections, where I would need to aid on the bolts whilst drilling, to use large expansion bolts. On each belay I wanted at least three bolts and the ability to rap off each stance. I chose a mixture of U-bolts and hanger rings for this purpose. I begged Lee for his powerdrill with the shonky promise that he could second me on the first ascent after I completed the hard work. So, with bags packed I drove to Tibrogargan to begin fixing and bolting. I acquired a generator so I could recharge the powerdrill's battery at the car. I created a comfortable base camp in the eastern side carpark, which would supply me for the forthcoming days of route preparation. 

I awoke at 5am and made my way up the west face with a hugely heavy haulbag, with four ropes, powerdrill, 50 bolts and four glue packs. Every day, for three days, I would rap down, shunt a pitch, mark the bolt placements, jug up drilling the holes, rap down placing the glue and bolts then continue on to the next pitch. Every ten holes or so, I would return to the carpark and recharge the drill. One particular incident had me exhausted. I was bolting the forth pitch when I ran out of power. I had rigged a network of ropes below me which led across the third pitches traverse and down the wall to the ground. I put the battery in my daypack and started down the ropes. It took me more than an hour to get to the ground, then another thirty minutes to get back to the car… to discover I had left my keys in the haul bag atop pitch five! So, back I walked, jumared up the ropes, got my keys and got back to the car, wasting a good 4 hours. For the second and part of the third pitch I had to self-belay myself on lead so I could prepare these traverse sections. I was terrified of falling off with Lee's drill and smashing it to bits so I aided a lot of this on hooks, wires and bathooks. It was three days later that I dragged myself home, scrubbed off the glue that adorned my body and fell asleep. I awoke the next morning with the blinding thought…. 'shit, I have left my tent up there with my sleeping bag and all my cooking stuff'. So, instead of a happy rest day, I re-drove back to Tibro, collected my tent, (thankful that the rangers had not started some huge search and rescue) and drove back home. All up it took me six days to bolt over a period of four years.

The actual climbing of the route went fairly straightforward. I dragged Lee along, who had never been on the route before, with promises of big wall climbing with lots of bolts. I think he imagined it was going to be a Verdon Gorge classic! The first couple of pitches went smoothly, and by about 9am I was ready for the third pitch, which I hadn't been able to shunt because of the traverse. I was fairly certain that this was going to be the crux. The rock looked terrible and the bolts were a fearful distance apart when looking from the belay. Lee checked his helmet and sat back into the hanging belay. If anything was to rip off, there was a good chance Lee would cop the falling rock. I slunk up the rock, delicately crimpy on the small edges, and gaining height slowly. I dislodged a tennis ball sized foothold that smashed Lee on the back and brought us both back to reality. This pitch was not going to be easy. I was cleaning as I went, throwing off huge rocks every now and then. Finally, I traversed left enough that I wouldn't kill Lee if I ripped something off. The part before the belay was very freaky as it was the last bolt I had placed and I had run out of glue. I clipped the bolt that wiggled in the hole with still wet one-part glue surrounding it. I reached the belay and Lee started seconding. The problem was, he was carrying a daypack which contained a powerdrill, hammer and spare bolts (so we could replace the dodgy bolt), and trailing a 50m rope! The heavy weight was not making life easy for him. After a fall back to the belay due to hold breakage, he struggled along the traverse -- absolutely gripped -- but made it safely to the belay. From this point the climbing gets better and better. I scampered up the forth pitch, on thin crimps and big runouts to a small ledge and belay. The exposure was awesome in this area, with clean rock on all sides. There was no way of traversing off to safer ground, it was just up, up, up. The final two pitches went easily on great rock and we were both soon standing on the North East Shoulder. The day was getting on, so we started rapping the five pitches back to the ground. It was great to be going down without a 30kg haulbag full of bolting gear! My dream of doing a modern multi-pitch route had finally been completed so I could rest easy… for about five minutes before setting off back south to find some more new routes to do in the Grampians.

Note: For those interested, the route description and topo for Sunburnt Buttress was included in qurank #6. For a printable topo, click here.

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