What When How to Train | Blue Mountains with Lee Cujes

All photos: Kamil Sustiak, Kamil Sustiak Adventure Photography

Looking to climb on gorgeous streaky sandstone cliffs full of high-angled crimps? Look no further than the Blue Mountains, sport climbing mecca of the land down under, boasting thousands of routes.

Legendary Australian climber Lee Cujes spent more than 20 years taking trips to the Blue Mountains before eventually moving there, and now it’s been his local crag for nearly a decade.

You can learn more about Lee in this previous episode.

GRIP FOCUS: tiny incuts, horizontal edges

STYLE FOCUS: bouldery face climbing

BEST CONDITIONS: Spring and Fall

WEATHER CONSIDERATIONS: Crags are at an elevation of around 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) and can be quite rainy. Humidity is usually pretty high (>70%) most of the time.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: Stick clip. Stiffer/edging shoes for standing on small feet. A Flash board/Tension block/etc. can be useful at some crags that don’t have great warmups. A few crags require you to rap in and climb rungs (think via ferrata type) out so you’d want gloves and some sort of sliding rope grab device (like a Tibloc or Traxion).

SPECIAL SKILLS NEEDED AT CERTAIN GRADE LEVEL: Being able to make deep lockoffs on small incut crimps can sometimes be the key to crux moves. Being able to stand on small feet is necessary no matter the grade.

Kris on Sweet Nightmares, an alternate finish of Sweet Dreams, 14. Photo: Lee Cujes

** Aussie and US grades don’t always translate exactly, so consider these approximate!** S = sport, T = trad, MP = multipitch

MUST DO’S:

• 5.10 (20) and under:

  • Honey Dip, 13 (T)

  • Cave Climb, 13 (T MP)

  • Sweet Dreams, 14 (T MP)

  • Bunny Bucket Buttress, 18 (S MP)

  • Theory of Negativity, 20 (S)

• 5.11 (21-23):

  • The Janicepts, 21 (T)

  • The Mind Boggles, 23 (S)

  • Hotel California, 22 (S MP)

  • Smegadeath, 23 (S MP)

• 5.12 (24-27):

  • Thin Line of Reprieve, 24 (T)

  • The Reality Dysfunction, 25 (S)

  • Samarkand, 25 (T MP)

  • The Way of All Flesh, 26 (S)

  • Stiletto, 27 (S MP)

• 5.13 (28) and up:

  • Hairline 2000, 28 (S)

  • Trail of Tears, 28 (S MP)

  • Scurvy, 30 (S MP)

  • Mother Earth, 31 (T)

  • Tiger Cat, 33 (S)

PERSONAL FAVORITES:

• Green Grass, 29 (S)

• Stiletto, 27 (S MP)

OVERLOOKED CLASSICS:

• Banksy crag area

BEST CRAG FOR A GROUP OF VARYING GRADE LEVELS:

• Upper Shipley

• Bells Supercrag

• Boronia Point

BEST REST DAY ACTIVITY:

• Exploring all the small towns throughout the area.

• Lots of outdoor recreation like hiking, mountain biking, trail running, etc. available as the area is a World Heritage Site.

GUIDEBOOK: Blue Mountains Climbing from Simon Carter, et al.

BEST PLACE TO STAY: Airbnb’s in Blackheath, Katoomba, Mount Victoria, Leura or camping throughout the Blue Mountains.

BEST PLACE TO EAT: Ivanhoe Bistro for pub-style food.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Kris Hampton  00:36

What's up everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton. And I'm sitting here just outside of Maple Canyon in Ephraim. Is that, how do you say this town's name? Ephraim?

Lee Cujes  00:47

Don't ask me.

Kris Hampton  00:51

I'm in Utah, and I'm with Lee Cujes. This is a What When How to Train episode for the Blue Mountains. Lee's been on here before. We've actually talked about a lot of things and a lot of different times. I think you've been on the podcast twice now, one a big community episode with the blackheathens. And one an episode about "is it really a plateau?" Is that right?

Lee Cujes  01:20

Yeah, it's good to be back.

Kris Hampton  01:22

Good. I'm psyched that you're here. And I'm psyched for this episode. Because you are about as nerdy as it gets when it comes to how do you train for a specific area and we're talking about your area.

Lee Cujes  01:36

Lee Cujes  01:36

Harsh but fair. 

Kris Hampton  01:40

Tell me a little about the Blue Mountains to start, and first off, is it Blues or Blueys? Because I know you Aussies love to add "eys" to the end of words.

Lee Cujes  01:51

Yeah, we love it. It's it's blueys. But the spelling of blueys is still a hotly contested debate. Whether you throw the Y in at the end or whether it's an IES. I'm personally an IES. But I think I'm in the minority. I'm not sure. But anyway, definitely blueys.

Kris Hampton  02:07

I have it written down here with a y. So there you go. I think that's now the de facto way,

Lee Cujes  02:12

if you wish it to be Yeah, but as long as you say blueys. But really, probably, I have to say probably outsiders call it the blueys. And if you're local, you just refer to it as the mountains. 

Kris Hampton  02:26

Ah, that's interesting. Yeah. Why do you think because the first thing I noticed in Australia is everything is shortened Maca's, tradies, you know, everything gets shortened. Why, why go into the longer word?

Lee Cujes  02:44

no, but it's just MTNS. not even joking.

Kris Hampton  02:50

Got it? Okay. All right. Fair. Tell me about the mountains.

Lee Cujes  02:55

It's, it's probably the most climbing dense. So if you're about quantity, and not necessarily quality... no, we're going to talk about good quality stuff. And it's, it's also well known as because it's a soft sandstone climbing area. So it's one of those, it's got a lot of unique characters in it in terms of the way it was first developed. And in terms of protection, so it started off as a very, you know, the history of the area goes back to it was one of the first places in Australia that was I suppose, approached as a, they use it, like, you know, when they were transferring from kind of mountaineering into roped rock climbing, and as that was happening in kind of, I guess, really around 1915 or so that there was some areas and some mountains in Queensland, in the glasshouse mountains that were climbed pretty much first. And right around that same time, just afterwards, the Blue Mountains and a small group of crazies called the Katoomba Suicide Club. That was their name with Dr. Dark that was he was like the leading figure,

Kris Hampton  04:10

Wow, this needs to be a graphic novel or something.

Lee Cujes  04:12

It's pretty it's pretty wild. These guys were you know, so they were mostly soloing around and sometimes like tying a rope around their waist and going up and you've you've been there you've seen it, it's pretty, it's pretty out there. Yeah. You know, we're talking, you know, multiple 100 meter high cliffs that they were, they were climbing around on and yes, so that the history is really big. And because the area is quite large, so it's, I keep having to do the miles conversion but like 100 mile, sort of radius of sandstone escarpment, kind of fully visible to the naked eye as opposed to like, I always think of a think of it as being a little bit analogous to the Red in the States, but for the red for me when I went for the first time, I was expecting it to be a bit like the Blue Mountains. But the red to me was like, hidden in forest. I couldn't really see it. I was driving up there and there was just trees and I would have to walk in. Whereas the Blue Mountains, it's kind of in your face. When you drive up. You see it. It's a big bigger escarpment. So

Kris Hampton  05:17

it's, it's really actually fascinating driving in, at least it was for me. Because when you're coming in from Sydney, you're you're basically driving on this highway that's on the top of the center ridge of the mountains. 

Lee Cujes  05:33

Right, exactly. 

Kris Hampton  05:34

So you see the passing, all these towns that are like dotting this ridge. And you're just way up above the floor for the whole time. Very cool.

Lee Cujes  05:45

So as a climber, you're typically you're walking down, or you're rapping in to access the cliffs, which is pretty cool. Like, yeah, it's good to be on on top of the thing. And look, that's... eight years ago, we decided we'd been going there for 20 years, like we would always go down there for our Christmas holidays. And then eight years ago, we just decided, yep, we're just going to buy a house that sits on the top of that ridge. Yeah, it's the place to be because if you want to go out and climb different stuff all the time. It is. Well, it's it's you're either going to, if you're in Australia, you're going to probably make one of two decisions. It'll be the Blue Mountains or it'll be somewhere in Victoria. So you've got access to the Grampians and Arapiles. That's probably the main choices. There are others, of course, but that they probably if you're going for numbers of rock climbs, the two options.

Kris Hampton  06:36

Yeah, there's a pretty I know there's a pretty strong climbing community in Blackheath. Does that also extend outward to like Mount Vic and Katoomba and further down the line either direction?

Lee Cujes  06:50

Yeah, so you're referring to the fact that there's these little towns that are separated by maybe five to 10 minute drives between them and they might have for example, let's say 5,000-6,000 people in each town. A bit like any like small town local, split up town, kind of arrangement. People in Blackheath think they've got it made and in Katoomba think that blackheath people are stuck up and they've got it made down there in Katoomba. So yeah, there's a good there's a good number of climbers in in all of those towns. Blackheath, for whatever reason, because is has a lot of climbing really close to it. They all do. Mount Vic, Mount Victoria has a stack of climbing right there as well. There's no particular reason. I mean, I guess one is always going to have more climbers and be more of a more of this scene is that more of the hub. And that's probably is Blackheath, but I'm only saying that because I'm in Blackheath,

Kris Hampton  07:47

if there were a climbing battle, climbing face off between all the towns in the Blue Mountains would Blackheath be the clear winner?

Lee Cujes  07:58

Yes, the clear winner.

Kris Hampton  08:01

okay, 

Lee Cujes  08:02

as long as Ben Cossey doesn't move house.

Kris Hampton  08:06

Fair. If there were a battle between Blackheath and Sheffield, who wins?

Lee Cujes  08:14

I get the feeling they fight dirty. Yeah. And we might lose out to their dirty tactics. Yep, they've got, I don't know, they're scrappy in the UK. You got to watch them. I would like to think we'd we hold our own. I know we'd all be at the pub at the end of it. That's, that's for sure. Yeah, I do think you know, it's always interesting talking about climbing towns. And I mean, you live in one as well. Yeah. We've talked about that a lot like the differences between these climbing towns and but it's they end up being little, little mirrors of each other in lots of respects, I think.

Kris Hampton  08:48

Yeah, absolutely. Is there like a de facto climbing mayor of Blackheath er, of the Blue Mountains.

Lee Cujes  08:57

I think in the past there in the past, there probably has been, or at least the way as an outsider then looking in, I think that there has been Mitch Warren, for a long time was a guy that was considered the mayor. But probably most people that, you know, Sydney climbers that come up to the mountains now wouldn't even know who Mitch Warren was. But he wore that mayor man hat for a while. he was the guy that kind of the self-imposed ethics police, the guy that was saying what you could and couldn't do in terms of rebolting, what, you know, all these kinds of things. So he held that role for for a lot of years, until, until one day he disappeared after assaulting somebody with a stick - story in and of itself. But anyway, so he's, he's off the scene. And but now, I would say, I don't know that it's kind of interesting that people that might have ended up putting the mayor hat on have become probably a bit more moderate in their views. And I think it's more of a shared responsibility now and I don't see a single figure, I might be wrong, but I don't see a single figure as being the sort of the, the one that everyone looks to for modeling ethics or behavior.

Kris Hampton  10:08

Yeah. If you had to vote, if you were forced, like I understand there's a compulsory vote coming up in Australia. If you had to do that for a mayor for the Blue Mountains, who would it be?

Lee Cujes  10:23

The mayor of Blackheath? Maybe.

Kris Hampton  10:26

See how you did that? I said, Mayor the Blue Mountains and you immediately said Mayor of Blackheath.

Lee Cujes  10:31

Yeah, I did, didn't I? I want to vote, you know, I'm future. I'm looking into the future. So I want to vote for Lee and Andrea's like, three or four year old son Max. 

Kris Hampton  10:45

Max 

Lee Cujes  10:46

Max Cossey. 

Kris Hampton  10:47

All right. I like this. Yeah, I like this idea a lot.

Lee Cujes  10:52

I think, yeah, he's got a big future.

Kris Hampton  10:55

For sure. Can we talk, Since we're like, talking about Blackheath, like winning the battle of the mountains, Let's talk a little about some of the characters who are there now? I think. Certainly, it has the strongest grouping of climbers in Australia. I'd have to think.

Lee Cujes  11:17

Yeah, if I mean, if you just had to lay it, lay it out on purely on the numbers and take all of the emotion out of it. That's true. Yeah, yep. There are strong climbers in other places, but for sure, but if you had to just stack them all up and like pick a fantasy football league have like the top 10?

Kris Hampton  11:36

blue mountains in general probably has most of them

Lee Cujes  11:39

The statistics would would bear out that. Yeah. Blackheath, I keep saying blackheath. The Blue Mountain is super strong.

Kris Hampton  11:46

Same difference in your mind. 

Lee Cujes  11:47

Yeah, exactly. 

Kris Hampton  11:48

And those are going to be the like, Tom O'Halloran. Yep. Lee Cossey. Yep. Andrea. Andrea Hah.

Lee Cujes  11:57

Ha ha, yep. Ben Cossey. Ben Cossey. Yeah.

Kris Hampton  12:03

Who else's there? Jake.

Lee Cujes  12:06

Jake Bresnahan.

Kris Hampton  12:10

So Luke's moved, right? Sorry. Luke has moved right?

Lee Cujes  12:14

Yeah. Yeah, he has. He has super strong he's moved to move to Victoria. And then there's look, there's people that kind of a little bit down the hill. That climb. You know that still climb in the Blue Mountains all the time other other really strong people? Ryan Holmes comes to mind. But there's also super strong boulderers, Kara Hazel is there. I think we mentioned Ben Cossey. We certainly mentioned Lee, the strong team of brothers that have been on top for years and years and years. Yeah. 

Kris Hampton  12:50

I'm the fucking best. 

Lee Cujes  12:51

Exactly. Very famous. Watching Ben send the groove train. If you haven't seen it, look it up on YouTube. Always a classic. Yes, yeah. So there's a whole there's a whole stack. There's a whole range of people. And there's lots of up and comers as well. Yeah. Particularly in, particularly in bouldering. And a lot of these people maybe, maybe live in Sydney, and come up all the time to climb and whether that's on boulders or routes. But yeah, so between Sydney, sort of that which is an hour and a half away. And the mountains itself. Yeah, there's a strong core group of fairly elite level climbers.

Kris Hampton  13:32

Cool. What about the climbing there? Talk to me about that? Is there like a prevalent style, like if we say the Red River Gorge is just long, pumpy enduro routes, you know, it's not true about every route. But is there a prevalent style or grip type or angle or something that is kind of the archetypal, this is the Blue Mountains?

Lee Cujes  13:56

I think the most people they're going to, they're going to probably treat the or think of the Blue Mountains as wall climbing, like standard, pretty standard wall climbing, you can start to break it down. You say, Okay, well, what kind of wall? Well, there's lots of vertical stuff, that and then there's lots of slightly slopey stuff, particularly for the easier grades. And then we start getting into you know, as soon as you're in 5.11, 5.12, and up, the angles just start steepening up. And so and for our rock type, as a good visual when you're looking down these escarpments, because you're always just going "where are where are the roots?". There's so much and what you realize is there's this... so everything that you're seeing, the parts that are climbed are such small amounts of rock, and you probably got an impression when you went there. You can just look for what seems like 10s and 20 miles of cliff. You're like is that all climbed? Well, no, it's not. And it's generally because there's so much choss. Yeah, 

Kris Hampton  14:57

and lots of vegetation. on the wall. In my memory anyway,

Lee Cujes  15:01

in parts there are and then for the parts where they aren't, you know, there isn't a lot of vegetation. It's because it's the cliff is just land slid away. And you know, it's quite, you know, inconsistent and chossy. Yeah, just bad quality rock, like the sandstone is so soft in parts that it's just uncomfortable. But the parts that are good, vary between quite good and you know, and extremely good. And I guess the bits that are easiest to access around the towns are the ones that have been bolted. But people are going further and further afield. And it is I mean, that's a nice thing. The fact that new route development is very much ongoing. I don't know whether I've said this so far. But there's like 7,000 routes, yeah, just in the Blue Mountains region, and still new things being put up, still new every year. It'd be interesting, I didn't get the numbers before here, but like, it'd be easy to do. Were pretty big using the crag.com in Australia. And that's where all the routes tend to tend to make their way a bit like you would for Mountain project. They could add it there. And so there's heaps of new routes going up all the time, which is good. And not just new routes, but whole new sectors. So yeah, whole new cliffs. all the time, which is really good, which you know, you can't say that for

Kris Hampton  16:19

Are they just harder and harder to access or? 

Lee Cujes  16:22

access is is often the case. But as you know, minds have broadened and kind of new ways of approaching things and thinking about things 20 years ago, you would never have thought it wouldn't have been worth bolting Elphinstone, which we'll talk about in a second, they wouldn't have even considered bolting that because there was no way to walk in to the base of that cliff garden. So they would just write it off and go to one where you can do that, because there's plenty of them, and then they they bolted those. But eventually, as you know, things become a bit more tapped out the concept of rapping into a cliff that is world class, looks, you know, with a whole range of basically 5.13 and 5.14 routes that and then climbing out on rungs and doing that for say 40 meters, you know, you need to climb out on rungs, they would have never done the rungs or anything like that, you know, some years ago. But now that looks like something that's really good. And it's now super popular. Yeah. And people can get in really quick, and they can get out really quick. And it was like why didn't we think of this before? It would have opened up so many opportunities, but they didn't bother because they just had easier, You know, there was so and so much easier things. Yeah, totally. Yep. 

Kris Hampton  17:43

Yeah. You just said 5.13 and 5.14. And if you haven't been to Australia, if you haven't paid attention to the routes there, you may not know that they have a totally different grading scale. The Ewbank scale, is that right? 

Lee Cujes  18:00

Yeah, exactly. After John Ewbank that came up with it, 

Kris Hampton  18:02

and it's pretty brilliant. It's just, you know, I don't know does it start at one?

Lee Cujes  18:07

starts at one 

Kris Hampton  18:09

and just goes 1234567 all the way to what's the top grade now like, 

Lee Cujes  18:14

well, well our top grade is and I hope I don't get this wrong, would be like 36. is that it? Which Oh, actually, it might actually no, because now it's basically 9a. I don't think we even really have any 9a+'s yet. So sorry, I just jumped French. So 5.14d is 35 for us, and we got a bunch of those. And they're they're sitting in the Blue Mountains. Yep. So but on the world scale, you know, 5.15d, and that's 39 theoretically, so we've got some catching up to do.

Kris Hampton  18:51

And in the short time since I recorded with Lee, they've done a little bit of that catching up. in just a few days apart, two potential 15a's or 36's were added to Australia, one in Nowra by Ryan Sklenica called Hard Cheese and one in the mountains, Tom O'Halloran added Hump of Trouble. You said 5.13 and 5.14. So that's like 28/29 and 33/34 ish?

Lee Cujes  19:24

Well, you know, your 28 is 13a, which is always a good, I always remember that one. Because it's kind of when I'm here in the States. You know that 28 range is like something that I'm interested in and it lines up neatly with the 13a and then the 5.14 is, is 32 for us. 8b plus French and that's always another another good little one that I remember. Yeah. And then you can, it is a one for one from - and this is confusing for people but - like from 5.12b, that's 25, and you can just count up 26, 27... It's a one for one all the way. But in your lower grades that starts to get super complicated, because essentially, you guys with your 5.10, 5.11 bracket, that's eight grades. Right? Right. Well, that only splits over six of our grades, So that's from 19 through to 24. So that's why, you know, when we're here sometimes and my wife Sam is trying to, she's like, I don't know, that doesn't really feel like, you know, this is a 10d. And then she comes back and says, oh well actually 10d is, that you know, the top end of 20. And the the bottom end of 21 for us. Yeah, so we call them split grades, right? So yeah, your system a little bit for the lower grades is, particularly in 5.10, and 11. You have a tighter bracket, which is always interesting. You got more work to do on your grading than we do for those, those grades. 

Kris Hampton  20:50

I don't know what grades mean, anyway, 

Lee Cujes  20:51

our grades are fatter.

Kris Hampton  20:53

I just, I just guess. that's what grades mean to me. Yeah. Climbing style? Alright.

Lee Cujes  20:59

Okay, so we said wall climbing, what haven't we said? fairly gritty, rock. And a lot of basically, the features tend to because it's sandstone. And look, I know not all sandstone areas are this way. And the red is a good example of huge pockets and flowing, swirling features that are totally amazing. The Blue Mountains doesn't have much of that. what it does have is kind of like a simpler sandstone where you can imagine the sandstone used to be a seabed, and the layers get laid down, and then they get, they harden. And when that's exposed, you end up with everything is kind of in horizontal bands. And so the holds that you're gripping most of the time, are horizontal edges of different sizes. Not all the time, but prevalent, you know, it's archetypal. So mostly horizontal edges, and horizontal breaks, is what you're finding on on routes, with a smattering of other things. And the other thing that makes it kind of cool is yes, there's sport cliffs that are single pitch that might vary from, I don't know, 30 feet to, you know, a full rope length in height. But then, just 20 minutes from town is you know, and from where you stay, you can rap into 8 and 10 pitch multi pitches, right. And they're right there. And people do it as a as an afternoon or a morning, you know, go and do an eight pitch climb, and then go and work for the afternoon or something like that. Yeah, just pretty. You can have an adventure, a big adventure really close to home.

Kris Hampton  22:33

Yeah, I thought that was really special about that place. And in fact, whenever the conversation comes up, like if you could choose anywhere to live, where would you live? I've said Blackheath a number of times, because it's so fantastic to be able to do that, go climb a hard sport route 15 minutes from your house and also go do a six or eight pitch Trad or sport climb, essentially, in half a day. That's, that's amazing.

Lee Cujes  23:04

I think the thing that draws a lot of people is the from from a lifestyle option. Like when I lived in Queensland, which is up further north, in where it's where it's warmer, climbing, still very, very good and super varied. But when you went climbing, you just do with where the climbing was, you went for the whole day. Yeah. You never went climbing for a half day, right? And if as we, as we get older, and we've got, well, we don't have kids, or responsibilities, or we don't have responsibilities, I'm sure I've got some but..

Kris Hampton  23:36

I have both. So you can have one of them if you want,

Lee Cujes  23:39

well, I want to play my trumpet and stuff. There's other things I want to do in the day. And yeah, so you kind of you're starting to look for convenience, without, but sometimes when you look for convenience, you sort of give up adventure, you give up the like the Grand Wow, of the whole thing. Whereas with the Blue Mountains, you don't compromise on that, you can compromise on other things. You know, suddenly you're living in a small town and you know, whereas before you lived in a big city, and you miss some conveniences and stuff, but if you're going there for climbing, and the ability to integrate with a community that are doing things other than climbing and maybe climbing is a part of what's going on in the day, then yeah, it's really good for that.

Kris Hampton  24:20

Yeah. And you're an hour and a half from Sydney, or you can just take the train to Sydney. Yeah. Which I mean, that's a pretty good trade off if you ask me.

Lee Cujes  24:30

If you're renovating your house, if you're doing something where you actually need supplies, that you can't get locally. And I know about this. It you know, you jump in the car, and you go down with a trailer and you pick up what you need and you bring it back up the hill. And it ends up being a half day exercise and probably grab some Mexican food while you're down there. It's it's a it's a good deal. It's not too bad.

Kris Hampton  24:51

Yeah, totally. Let's talk about, you know, more. Let's go a little deeper into the area itself. One thing I want to know, or I want to talk about, because when we arrived we were literally at the rental car spot or the car hire spot as you would call it. And or just the car hire. You wouldn't say spot. There's too many words for an Australian.

Lee Cujes  25:17

Yeah, I was trying to think what the what the slang would be for car hire. But no car hire, that'll do.

Kris Hampton  25:23

And my wife was asking the people there about all the poisonous animals or dangerous animals in the country. She had to know them all, like, tell me all the things I might come across so that I can be terrified every time I step outside. And we've heard a lot about that here in the states, like everything's dangerous in Australia. So talk to me about that.

Lee Cujes  25:49

Yeah, you might die. The climbing is good, though. It's worth taking the risk. There is a lot so I think I didn't look up this stat. But I think Australia has eight of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world. So yeah, we've got them. And for the most part, I think the most, I think the deadliest ones are super shy. They don't really live around where we live, but we've got Taipans and brown snakes and things and they're quite aggressive. And extremely poisonous. We've got Sydney funnel web spiders, which you know, if you if I left my gumboots out, what would you call gum boots, like.. 

Kris Hampton  26:29

muck boots, 

Lee Cujes  26:30

Muck boots? Yeah, if I left those kinds of things out and about, like lying on their side, under the house, and then I went to put my foot like there's no no person that lives around where I live would just put their foot in a shoe that's been outside. You'd always tap it out and make sure there's nothing inside it. Because that's the way you get bitten and you know. and the other thing is gardening. you know you like because they these spiders basically borrow around in the ground and if you're gardening. Yeah, like when we were digging up to do stuff for our renovation we pulled out heaps of these things. Yeah, so they they can kill you. Jellyfish. say you want to go to the ocean? Want to have a nice time? Yep, well, you better... Sydney's good for that because it's like a cooler climate. You don't really get the same jellyfish that you get in northern Queensland. But yeah, box jellyfish and irukandji. Again, they'll that's in the northern parts of Australia, go for a swim at the wrong time? Boom. You're dead.

Kris Hampton  27:29

Boom. You're dead. 

Lee Cujes  27:30

Yeah. But well, so. And same, like if you're up north as well. I mean, everyone knows that they want to go down to the water and wash some dishes or something like that when you're camping. Croc grabs you? you're gone, it's just gonna get you finished. There's no escape. Oh, by the way, when you go for a swim, just keep that... we've got shark nets.. if you go for a swim in the wrong wrong place. And there's no shark nets, for God's sake like don't do it at night or something and don't do it drunk like the sharks can smell the alcohol and then boom, you're dead.

Kris Hampton  28:08

I love this. How many of these things have you seen while climbing?

Lee Cujes  28:13

while climbing? look, you'll see it's pretty uncommon like like if, without taking the piss, which is what we would say, I haven't seen anything like in the last year of my climbing, I haven't seen anything any in a year. but coming out of winter now, which we will be coming out of winter soon, and things start warming up, people will be out trail running which is super common in the Blue Mountains. beautiful spot to do, it's amazing hiking trail running. very common for them like someone on a 5k run to see a snake and like jump over it on their run, super common. but going climbing usually with a few people and stuff like that it's pretty pretty uncommon. You sticking to tracks and to you know the area at the base of the cliff? fair, fairly uncommon. Yeah.

Kris Hampton  29:04

We didn't see a single koala while we were there either.

Lee Cujes  29:06

You will not see them. Yeah, you really gonna have to that's it's a it's a shame. I think they've all got chlamydia.

Kris Hampton  29:12

That's what I heard.

Lee Cujes  29:13

Yeah, yeah, Google that if you don't believe me, it's actually a thing. but that yeah, they're on the they're on the decline which is which is sad. So it's worth, worth coming and maybe going to one of the one of the zoos or one of the animal animal parks to see those. Yeah, you're very it's super uncommon to see them in the wild now.

Kris Hampton  29:34

We did see lyrebirds with you guys though. 

Lee Cujes  29:37

Yeah, they're awesome. Then Blue Mountains is is grate for lyrebirds and bird life in general. And the fact that they mimic things like motorcycles, chainsaws.

Kris Hampton  29:49

You should look up videos of the Lyrebirds kind of amazing.

Youtube audio  29:55

to persuade females to come close and admire his plumes. He sings the most calm complex song he can manage. And He does that by copying the songs of all the other birds he has around him, such as the kookaburra.

Youtube audio  30:13

It's a very convincing impersonation. He also in his attempt to outshine his rivals incorporates other sounds that he hears in the forest. that was a camera shutter and again a now a camera with a motor drive, and that's a car alarm.

Youtube audio  30:47

and now the sounds of foresters and their chainsaws working nearby.

Lee Cujes  31:06

lyrebirds on one of our um.... I think it's the 10 cent 10 cent coin. 

Kris Hampton  31:11

Oh, really? 

Lee Cujes  31:12

Yeah, I think so. It's one of our one of our currency pieces. It's a good one. It's a good bird.

Kris Hampton  31:16

Are there any special like equipment that you would need for, for climbing in the Blue Mountains? Like if you go to rifle without kneepads, you're not climbing very many hard things. Yeah. What happens in the Blue Mountains? What do you need?

Lee Cujes  31:32

Well, I mean, the first thing to think about would be, if you wanted to climb some of the let's say you want to do some like some things around like 5.6 through to mid 5.11. Some of the real classic standards that have been around for a long time, you probably going to still need wallplates. These an audience might have heard like of this as the, the famous kind of Australian carrot bolt with no hanger. you, like it's a bolt in the rock that has no hanger on it, such as the bolt sticking out a little way from the cliff. And if you didn't know, and you were climbing some multipitch and there was a critical bolt, you'd just be looking at it going, what do I do with this? if you've never seen one before. so we make and have probably since the 60s, or 70s made these keyhole shaped brackets, that slide on to the bolt. And then the Quickdraw gets clipped to it. And but the thing to be aware of as well is if you're ever doing those types of routes, don't use your skinny, modern wire gate, or really skinny I-beam. Like a, even you have to watch out with like a new Petzl spirit, that kind of I-beam construction of carabiner that has a very low profile or just not very, not very fat, they can still, it can not block the hole in the keyhole enough to stop it sliding off. And I know that's difficult if you've never used these things, you know, what is this guy talking about, but just consider which carabiners you use to clip through those bolts because otherwise what happens is - and this has happened - you know someone's eight bolts up on a on a route, goes to pull rope, it rattles the rope down the route. And every single quickdraw rounds off the bolt. and you are now soloing. And then if you get nervous? boom, you're dead.

Kris Hampton  33:29

Australia's fucking dangerous

Lee Cujes  33:35

so that's one thing, wallplates. that'll be one. You can probably if you know anybody around, we're happy to loan them. We've got way too many. I got a bucket of these things that I'll never use. So you can always ask around or just get them at the local shop and use them as a as a souvenir, you know, grab six or something and that'll probably probably do for most of most of what you'll do. The other thing you can use as well just in a pinch is sliding the nut down on a you know, unlike on a wide stop stoppers, right we call them the opposite wires. Just slide the slide the middle part down so you've got the loop and then put it over the bottom slide the not backup extension. cinch it up. Yep. Yeah, I've whipped on those there. Yes, that's fine. Yep. So that's wallplates. You're going to need them if you want to do any carrotted routes. and look, we're, that's not the exclusive bolt type by any means and rebolting efforts from like, the good guys at the SRC rebolting fund are replacing those out with glue in ring bolts basically. Yeah. So the other thing that I would say, quote, I take on a trip to the blues, I would take a stick clip, or I would buy one. Routes are on average, I feel, based on my experience in the States, slightly more run out than the states generally. And I'm not sure if you agree but that just or it..?

Kris Hampton  34:58

felt the same. felt like New River style bolting to me.

Lee Cujes  35:02

Yep. All right. So on average more on our end, we won't typically place, it's not like Europe where we'll place the first bolt like super close to the ground for your convenience. that almost never happens, we'll place the first bolt pretty damn high. Because we always have kind of figured the end look, I can, you know, I was bolting 20 years ago and I can say that we always just assumed the first bolt was going to be where you would be really scared to jump off. And once you had that clip, the second bolt not should be not so far above that. So then you've got two things, but you always thought that people would be quite careful getting to the first bolt and and it was better to do that than putting a low lower first bolt where people are then really lax and then can fall off and hit the ground. So don't be what I would say to people ,is don't be afraid to stick clip. Just stick clip the first bolt on routes and then you're not breaking any ankles and you're gonna have a good day. So bring the stick clip and and use it. I'd say the landings at nearly all of the cliffs are very rocky and it's not it's not beautiful grass. Yeah, there's there's jagged rocks everywhere. And yeah, it's good to use the stick clip.

Kris Hampton  36:12

And sometimes you're on a ledge still quite far off the ground.

Lee Cujes  36:17

Yes, super common. I mean, it's gonna you, you could break or break a leg and then drag your belayer off the off the ledge and you both go so yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah, be cautious it is for that I must say like, it's that thing I was saying before about an adventurous feel. Even the single pitch sport, the sport crags often super common to be on a small ish kind of ledge with a huge drop into the valley. So I mean, it's beautiful. It's amazing. Yeah, but is it particularly kid friendly? There are some some kid friendly-er cliffs. But I would say like as a general rule, no, not really. Is it dog friendly? No, not really. There's a few places where it's okay. But like, generally not. You kind of want to have your wits about you. Even though you're five minutes from a cafe. And that's the weird thing. Like it feels like an outdoor gym and sometimes, but yeah, it would be really easy for for things to go wrong for people if you were taking it too casually. Yeah. So what else there's a couple of, couple other things. So shoes. If you're only bringing one pair, I would recommend that you bring a stiffer shoe. Because we're talking about these little horizontal edges. You're standing on really small footholds and that's, that's regardless of the grade. So even the easy grade routes in the main. If it's easier graded, typically it's going to be slabbier and if you're climbing these slabs, you're going to want a stiffer shoe because you're gonna be standing on really quite small edges, and even the hard routes, like if you're an elite climber, you'll choose what shoes to wear and If you want to wear softies that's totally cool but, like if you're only bringing one, I would recommend a stiffer shoe. Some of the crags lack adequate warmups, some like Centennial Glen which is a very popular, very popular crag one of the first sport crags that was developed in the mountains and still super convenient access, doesn't in the main, depending on your grade, doesn't have particularly good warm ups. So also a crag board. You know something to warm up your fingers and get recruited before you pull on is a really good thing. Yeah, from awesome woodys, of course. Get the awesome woody's one, you know, be Ozzy proud. They make good stuff they do. Yeah. Yeah, bring a crag board, or get one or make your own if you, if you need to. But yeah, grab an awesome woody, something like that to get recruited properly. I guess there's a there's a heap of finger injuries in places like wild iris and stuff when you're jamming your fingers into pockets. But I know that there's a lot of finger injuries that happen in the Blue Mountains as well, particularly because people are trying to do things when it's really cold. Sure, and pulling on and things go bang, so don't be one of those people. Lastly, for gear, a couple of the harder cliffs that we mentioned before Elphinstone, which is like one of the premier, it is the premier hard climbing cliff in Australia, has the hardest routes basically. And also the pit which absolutely shines at 13a sled for me it's the best 13a cliff in the Blue Mountains. Both these areas have abseil in, climb out approaches. And that kind of means you're going to want some kind of rope grab like a slug, a tibloc or a traxion, mini traxion.

Kris Hampton  39:36

and are you climbing out up a rope?

Lee Cujes  39:38

you're climbing out up... Yeah, I didn't explain that. so that you would rap in. And then when you climb out, you're climbing out on rungs and you're protecting yourself with a sliding rope grab on the fixed rope that you've you've you've come in on so like if you were to fall off the rungs then you need something to catch you, so you need a traxion or tibloc or something like that, yeah. And some gloves make that much more comfortable to climb out on their own. So if you're planning to go to some of these more elite crags Yeah, chucking those few little items in will make your life easier.

Kris Hampton  40:12

Good beta. Let's talk when. is there, like a lot of areas have a busy season, and then they have the actual good weather season. Lander is a prime example of that. it's really busy in the summer, because it's one of the better areas in the country. But the shoulder seasons are actually much better to climb there.

Lee Cujes  40:31

Well, that's a carbon copy of what I would say for the Blue Mountains. And I'm looking at, I just pulled up the crag.com. And I'm looking at this, the, you know, where the ticks are being put in the two highest months are basically December, January. But that's our summer, right. And that is not, I repeat, not the best time to climb in the Blue Mountains. The reason is, because people are, people like me, coming down from Queensland and coming up from Victoria that're going there on their on their Christmas holidays, because it's so great. And they just make do and they sweat. And they slide off the small holds. it's a great place to have a holiday regardless, but it's not the best time. the best time would, and everyone will have their own opinions, because some people like it when it's really really cold. I'm not one of those people, I prefer more kind of shoulder season type thing. So for me, April, is like a prime month. I really like it and September, October are usually really good months too. in saying that..

Kris Hampton  41:40

And April would be your fall or autumn.

Lee Cujes  41:44

It'd be Yeah, exactly. Yep. That's right.

Kris Hampton  41:46

September, October is your spring. 

Lee Cujes  41:48

Yeah, that's right, coming out of winter. So I mean, what what you should say is as well, in terms of weather and conditions is that you're at 1000 meters, 3000 feet of altitude. So it can rain quite a lot. Like it's subject to a lot of weather. So the, the daily chance of rain year round hovers about 25%, meaning every four days or so you can bank on getting some rain, but of course it doesn't come every four days. Sometimes it'll be like two weeks straight of rain, these things can happen. And 

Kris Hampton  42:23

there was a lot of rain when we were there, 

Lee Cujes  42:25

you wouldn't be the first climber to come to the Blue Mountains for you know, planning a rampage to get completely rained out the entire time, Joe Kinder.

Kris Hampton  42:38

That's perfect. Let's talk, let's talk how. That's what, that's what people really, really want to know. Like, how do we prepare to climb hard at the Blue Mountains? Whether it's holiday trip, or whatever, what are the specific skills you need there? And do they show up in different grade brackets? You know, does it like a certain skill really come into play at 5.12 or 5.13? Or 20... 25? Is that 5.12? 24/25?

Lee Cujes  43:12

Exactly, Yeah. 12a is 24. And then 12b is 25. Yeah, exactly. I think you want to be able to stand on small holds in all grade brackets. That's that's like something that's ubiquitous, I think but, 

Kris Hampton  43:29

and they're not super slippery holds. 

Lee Cujes  43:32

And that's, that's kind of nice. Like for a very popular area where like lots and lots of climbing is happening. So if you if you had this in Europe, where there's 7,000 routes in an area, and you're getting on 5.10 level routes, they're going to be polished as all get out. Yeah, on well, particularly if it's limestone in any of these popular European areas. You will, if you don't like polish, and I'm trying to, I don't know about you, but like now because I love European limestone. I've had to train myself away from thinking that polish is bad. Yeah, you just have to retrain your brain. But some people are unwilling to retrain their brain and they just hate it. They want friction. If that's you, the Blue Mountains will suit you. Because there is very, very little polish. It's it's grippy sandy. So sometimes, you know, you'll move your foot on, on an edge on and you'll feel the grains of sand give way you know, it is it is like that. So yeah, there's very, there's great friction on the majority of the holds unless they're made of glue. And yet, but you do need to be able to actually put your boots on a small hold and stand on it. So doing things like footwork drills and climbing routes that you know, slabby routes on granite, that kind of thing would be - depending on where you're coming from and what you're used to - like if you haven't done a lot of that, if you're just used to pasting your feet on? if you lived at Maple and climbed at Maple Canyon all the time. You better get ready, like the footwork is couldn't be further apart. You're not just pasting your feet on big cobbles, you're on, you're standing on small micro edges.

Kris Hampton  45:11

I actually think in like today's commercial gyms, you can spend a lot of time like standing on bad volumes, like trying to stand in the bolt holes of a volume and and let the friction do some of the work, learn to smear on those frictiony walls that are, and volumes that are so popular in gyms now. So you really can train for that kind of thing. And there are lots of like, if you have a home wall, there are lots of no shadow feet and small, small, like textured edges that you can, you can buy and learn to stand on. And that'll be super helpful.

Lee Cujes  45:52

Yeah, definitely. And the other thing, which is kind of good, because I think it mimics a lot of current fads in training around things like fingerboard and hangboarding is having strong fingers. And you know, being able to crimp is going to be again handy, kind of at all, at all levels. That the holds are very simple. They're going to kind of almost mimic what you're grabbing when you're doing your standard training on things like hangboard, fingerboard. A lot of the holds are going to feel that way. So and I know Look, we we asked before this episode, we went out to the community and we asked them you know what they thought was sort of some key key elements to train before for a trip and there was a lot of cool kind of themes coming back through from that and crimping was Crimping was one of those things. And some people, you know, even went so far as to say like, you know, high angle crimping.

Kris Hampton  46:55

Yeah, Luke Hanson said high angle crimping, so yeah, I mean,

Lee Cujes  46:59

I didn't watch Aiden Roberts. Yeah, he would go really well. Well, everywhere but the Blue Mountains, he'd go really well, because it's the ability to not only just grab the crimp, but really own it, and be able to pull your body in on it. That, yeah, in the higher grades, kind of kind of helpful. Almost going the other way. A skill that I see like if we're talking certain sort of now 5.13 and up climbers, a skill that they have, is the ability to utilize all of the friction that is available before needing to go into something like a high angle crimp. Yeah, so they have an amazing ability to hold a really small edge in like a drape, like open grip, and use minimal energy, and really milk all the friction that's available. And look, if you don't have that facility, because you don't climb on sandstone, it might be difficult to kind of train that and understand what I'm talking about. But I guess the thing to say is that even for a grippy rock type, conditions can play a big role. So sometimes you'll do something like, for example, routes I used to try when I would come down in Christmas time, and it's December and it's, you know, nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit out and I would then, you know, when I moved here, and I just go down there in the shoulder season and just do the route straightaway. and like, it's all conditions. Suddenly your skin is harder. You don't have as much sweat going on. And it's the classic thing where you have this feeling that the rock is gripping you. Instead of the other way around. Yeah, it's magic. When you can get those those days with a nice breeze. That's it. You're kind of right temperature. You're not sweating, and you've got nice hard harbor but not too hard skin. Works really well. So yeah,

Kris Hampton  48:59

I can definitively say that here in maple the rock is not gripping me back.

Lee Cujes  49:04

No, no, it does the opposite. It's trying to eject you.

Kris Hampton  49:08

Yes, exactly. You are famously a mood board junkie. Has the moon board prepared you for Blue Mountains?

Lee Cujes  49:16

I think it was really, really good. Particularly if you're let's say you're more of a, if you tend towards the more endurance style of climbing and the technical side of climbing, maybe lower angle, maybe not. I think if you're more of a route climber, a route climber's climber and endurance climber, the moon board, in particular, the 2016 set, which is the three black... Yeah, the original set, if you know which one I'm talking about, which was the kind of the smaller hold set. Yeah, that set in particular, was amazing for allowing me to build the snappiness and the recruitment and the power to take on those kinds of, you know, 13, you know, high thirteen's kind of cruxes that you would find on the routes. So the routes in the Blue Mountains and we talked about this a bit, it's a bit hard to, to say that they're bouldery, because often they're quite long. But But by the same token, the cruxes nearly all are boulder cruxes, it's not like you're often, you usually do get kind of shut down on a move. like, it'll be a really long, like, you'll fall off because you're pumped, but if you really looked at it, it's because the boulder was quite challenging for you, like the boulder that you had to do, right. And the moon board was really good at developing that kind of that kind of fast twitch, which I mean, people that climb on it, they know what I'm talking about. you just have to watch a video of someone, you end up snapping you just... that amazing sort of like, cut and catch style of climbing. Because it's the opposite of endurance climbing, which you're already good at, it helped fill a gap. So yeah, it's really good, I find it and the other thing that I find it's really good for is if I've done a lot of hangboarding. hangboard, As we know, you grab it, put, you have weight on or you don't, you know you're doing hangs or whatever. But it's very controlled. And so you're building strength, and you're doing hypertrophy type work, muscle building work. And some neuromuscular work, if it's really heavy, and you're just doing brief hangs, and that's all fine, but it's always very controlled. What you're missing is the speed element, the recruitment element, which only comes from like snapping up a board and grabbing a small hold, and you have to grab it really quickly and accurately. And then you need to move from it. And you do the same thing, again, that fills a void that hangboarding can't do alone. So I find it useful as a tool to supplement, hangboarding for me is year round. It's all the time, and it never goes away. And I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. And the moon boarding for me is phases that I drop in to help like, level up my power and recruitment game. 

Kris Hampton  52:09

If you happen to be a moon board frother the same as Lee, then you might want to check out his Moon board benchmark Buster training plan through sequence app, which is run by another mountains mega Crusher, Jake Bresnahan. And you can find out more about that at sequence-app.com. And if there's one thing I know about Lee, it's that he doesn't half ass anything. So I bet all of you Moon board frothers will be quite happy. You mentioned that they're, the routes can be really long, but they're also bouldery. Are they generally sustained? Or are they like boulder - rest - boulder - rest?

Lee Cujes  52:56

I think typically, it is more the latter. So it's more of like a boulder - rest of some, in some format rest in some format. So the easier route, the better the rest. Yeah, the you know, the, at Elphinstone, for example, where we have the sort of the highest level routes, it would still be similar like on something like Tiger cat, the famous 33, or like 14b, you start like with an opening section, and then you have a nearby rest. And then you have a like a kind of a hard bouldery section to a rest on a big rail, you know, where you can chuck your heel up maybe. And then you have another, the cartoon crux that they call it cartoon crux because it's using a hold that really it's just a suggestion, it's a cartoon drawing of a hold that's not really a hold that you have to use. And then you get through to a big like, wrapping jug, horizontal kind of kind of rest. And then it's you're only at halfway and it's almost a sprint to the finish. However, the rest that someone like Jorge Diaz-Rullo used on his flash of that route, is like a shallow two finger pocket that he's you know... like so at a higher level, the rests are worse. Sure, but by the same token, it's still not the classic sustained Red River Gorge where every move feels similar for the entire route, and it's just a battle of attrition. It is a little bit more... one way to say it would be discontinuous. The other way to say it would be, I guess sort of tactics in juicing, where you're figuring out for your body chemistry, What is the way to what is the way to to win this battle? Is it going to be a is it a sprint? Is it an adam ondra sprint, or is it going to be five minutes at this hand jam rest in a break that's gonna win it for you. And I've I've tried to figure that out for myself and it almost I can never figure it out like a golden rule that always works. Sometimes it's go really fast and other times it's like milk that rest. Yeah. Depends on the route.

Kris Hampton  55:02

And we've got a bunch of comments from the community here that echo a lot of the things you're you're saying but let's stop on some of the things if they if they are things that we haven't talked about: lots of crimping. Mr. Ben Janga said crimping. See who else do we have here talking crimping, Doug MCC said proper crimping. Luke Hansen said high angle crimping. Cheers Nicole said crimping obviously.

Lee Cujes  55:34

That's a good point Nicole makes actually around, we didn't mention the whole if... she she's short. So she's saying short person stuff is lock offs and highsteps. So often there's a long distance between these holds even on like low grade routes, which can mean and of course, they're still doable. Like we've got some classic reachy things that Lynn Hill, you know, climbed when when she was out there, just floated up everything. so that all these things, they're still possible. But you want to train that in some format. So lock offs, even doing things, you know, lock offs on the campus board could be, could be pretty good just to, You know, even if it's feet on a chair or whatever, but just building some some lock off power can be quite good.

Kris Hampton  56:21

And I think doing like finding and doing lock offs on the wall is really valuable too. Because, like Will Vidler in here says ability to grab an edge and lock it to your hip. You know, a lot of that comes from how you place your lower body in the position you get into and learning how to hold those lock offs that are, you know, far too big for you to just be able to lock off, you know, if you're like holding a ring or something.

Lee Cujes  56:50

Yeah, totally. Yeah. The other one that comes up a few times from different people is mentioning mentioning skin.

Kris Hampton  56:59

Yeah, that's a that's a big one. That one was a surprise for me when I was there. It's, you lose a lot of skin climbing,

Lee Cujes  57:09

it would be typical that and I remember I was talking to Sam about this. And she related do you remember... And she said You remember like when we used to drive down. And we'd have our first day we were super frothing just out there climbing heaps. And then the second day, and you might be down there for 10 days or something. So the second day everyone is looking in your group is just looking at their fingertips going, I don't think I can climb. Yeah, like you just have red that you have, I always say with your fingers, you've got good red, and then you got bad red. And so you're looking down and you're seeing bad red across all of your tips. Like a comp climber would after they've just tried that fourth, they're on their fourth volume in the World Cup. And they've just tried it 20 times and just sliding down some volume like that, it's that bad red. And that's what happens on day two, and then you of course have a rest day and you come back and your skin has miraculously like it's, it's come good. So if you do have for example, if you've got a fairly short trip, it does pay to think about what you do for for skin preparation prior to the trip. And I'm only just learning about that kind of now with some of the stuff that I'm doing as well. And I know that like we've talked a little bit about it, that concept of... and so like I can tell you what I did for this trip, which was: about seven to 10 days out from a trip I started to I started to sand back my like back home and I would wait till after I hangboard session for example where my hand, my skin is really chalky still, I think that's helpful. And then I would sand all my fingers and my thumbs back and I would use like a you could use one of those Rhino you know skin sanding things or even better one of the power company you know skin files I was using like an electric plug it into the wall like sander, brrrrr, and just sand everything back. And then I would go up and and moisturize straightaway. So clean off and moisturize. And I did that every day. And what that did do is it It knocked all the skin back and allowed it to come back thicker. Yeah. And so when I was like ready to start climbing on this trip, I already had good skin I didn't need to let the climbing over the first four days develop the skin that I needed to sort of come good for the rest of the trip. I'd already done. it was pre done. the trap is if you do a bit of that and then you forget and you don't follow through it'll thicken up and then it'll start to potentially shed off and you'll arrive at the trip with terrible skin. Yeah, so I think there's, some people should muck around with that idea to see what works for for them. I know people that you, that have very sweaty skin, some damp skin. They and like that's most of the people I know would sort of fall in that bracket. I'm the opposite, but they use things like some of the rhino drying products or anti hydral or something like that. Again, not wanting to experiment with it for the first time right before the trip, I think that's a mistake. But if you're already on it, and you know that you have quite damp skin, you might want to use those to start to toughen and dry your tips as well, before you come.

Kris Hampton  1:00:26

Yeah, absolutely. I think learning how your skin responds to these kinds of things is super smart and, and understanding what your skin type is and what the weather of the area you're going to, you know, you you sort of want different skin for a really dry place versus a really humid place. you can have really thick skin going to a humid area. And that's probably a good thing. When you're going to a really dry area, If your skin's thick and glassy, it's going to be no good for you. You're just gonna, especially if it's cobbles, or granite or slippery limestone edges, you're just gonna blow off of everything.

Lee Cujes  1:01:05

Yeah, yeah, that sounds sounds totally reasonable. I will say as a bit of a knowledge share. It seemed to take me about 20 years to figure out what kind of skin type I had. I always thought ahhhh... because it's it was really sweaty where I lived, like it was really hot. And so I was always sweating. And so I thought that I had really damp skin, too, sweaty skin. And then I did when anti hydral first came out and was first available to climbers, Of course, I'm I'm an early adopter with these things. Yeah, I smeared it all over everything.

Kris Hampton  1:01:34

I'd say you overdid it, didn't you?

Lee Cujes  1:01:35

Yeah, i did. More, it's more and and then all I just kept splitting in the creases of my fingers. And like an idiot I did not connect the fact. And I just kept doing it and I just kept splitting and kept splitting and then I just like ended up throwing out the tubes, I wouldn't use it anymore. And eventually the splits went away. And it took me years and years to figure out. like if you've if you've tried some any kind of drying agent and you are splitting in your, particularly in your creases, which take kind of two weeks to then heal and then they're weak and they take you know, months ultimately to come back and be be good. if you're doing that and you're splitting, don't use any drying products ever. just throw them all the way or give them to a friend and buy all of the moisturizing products instead. and sand, so just do sanding and use moisturizing products and you'll be in a much better place and that's coming from years of me stuffing it up and not understanding my own skin type.

Kris Hampton  1:02:40

Yeah I did the exact same thing. you know climbing in the red for years anti hydral helped a little. I think I did not go overboard the same way you did. I think you had already gone overboard and other people had already gone overboard so I read your warnings and did not. But since I've moved to Wyoming, I've realized my skin's actually pretty prone to being really dry. So I haven't used a drying agent in I can't tell you how long and I haven't had a split or... I've had maybe one flapper in the last five years or something like that. 

Lee Cujes  1:03:17

man, that's incredible.

Kris Hampton  1:03:18

It's been great. 

Lee Cujes  1:03:19

If people come to the Blue Mountains, they're gonna get a flapper. you don't get a flapper coming to the Blue Mountains, I'll give you your money back.

Kris Hampton  1:03:29

I wish I knew I wish I remembered whether I got a flapper there or not, I'd send you an invoice. But yeah, we did get 'skin toughness' from SRC rebolting, as well as somebody else mentioned it here, set in stone southeast Queensland.

Lee Cujes  1:03:48

Thanks, mate. And Monty.

Kris Hampton  1:03:49

And you mentioned that it's really bouldery. Finn Irving said 'campusing dyno power'. Yeah. And Cairo said 'sloper triple paddle moves for sure' and... 

Lee Cujes  1:04:04

see i, i don't know bouldering enough to know whether he is not, is joking or not. But yeah, if you've got the triple paddle, bring it along.

Kris Hampton  1:04:16

I love it. I do have to just mention Jackson climbing here real quick, who said 'choss dodging and long distance driving to the Grampians.'

Lee Cujes  1:04:24

Coming from a Grampians climber, yeah, there's always, the guys that live down there. They're definitely on better stone, and they lord it over us. some of the best stone? Well, really, yeah, if you don't know, then, you know, it really is amazing, because it's essentially quartzite down there. It's just mind bogglingly good stone. But they have you know, like everything. It's always a compromise. They've got their own problems. Yeah, I've spoken about those problems and other other podcasts. 

Kris Hampton  1:04:53

Especially now. 

Lee Cujes  1:04:54

Yeah, yeah, access is a real problem. 

Kris Hampton  1:04:56

Stuart art says something we've already talked about which is being able to do two V5 boulders with a jug in the middle. I think that's just a valuable skill for any sport climber, to learn how to shake out on a jug and learn what that means,

Lee Cujes  1:05:10

yes, Stu's a machine, he knows his stuff. And I guess what he's getting at there being like a sort of a 8c/8c+ kind of climber is, what he's saying is, even in the harder routes, if you have that skill, you know, the, the boulders might not be so hard. But your ability to recover between the boulders really becomes a factor in order to get up these harder routes in the Blue Mountains. And we're talking at that level, kind of like top end 5.13 into 5.14.

Kris Hampton  1:05:43

And then Doug MCC, as well as Louis, Valarie, Lewis says 'thermal shock.' And Doug says 'methods to stay warm in the cold.'

Lee Cujes  1:05:54

Doug McConnell is yet another one of the best climbers in the Blue Mountains. And Doug is well known, currently in Flatanger in Norway crushing the cave. He is well known for climbing in really cold conditions and really loving it. But he, like we know, like the colder it is, you know, around that four degrees Celsius, getting close to freezing is when... that is the temperature, that is you know, La Sportiva and Scarpa have chosen to optimize your rubber on your shoes for. Why did they do that? because that is the temperature at which your fingertips stop sweating. At four degrees, you cannot sweat out of your fingertips anymore. It is it is kind of scientifically optimal.

Kris Hampton  1:06:40

For those of you trying to do that conversion in your head, like I was trying to do, Four degrees Celsius is approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lee Cujes  1:06:51

It is kind of scientifically optimal temperature for climbing. And if you're, if you're me, I'm just numbing out and dying. if you're Doug, you are you are getting ready for the route and what he's saying there is like tactics for staying warm. And I always, like I watched, you know, Dave MacLeod videos of climbing in Scotland and things like this. And I just, I'm always sitting there thinking, how is he..? I'm always like, interested in the concept of tactics to stay warm and not numb out. And to not freeze on route and to get warm for for climbing. And to have a belayer that doesn't die while you're on the pitch, all those things. if they are handy, particularly if you want to come to climb in in winter, which is you know, your your summer in the States. And if you were planning for June, July, August, you'd better be ready for some really seriously cold conditions.

Kris Hampton  1:07:48

And I assume it's humid cold there too.

Lee Cujes  1:07:51

Generally. Yes.

Kris Hampton  1:07:52

So that's that's a rough kind of cold. 

Lee Cujes  1:07:54

Yeah, I guess once it's so cold, you don't even really feel the humidity anymore. But it will like, through winter, it is rarely under 80% humidity.

Kris Hampton  1:08:04

I'll say this. I've lived in the Midwestern United States where it's very humid. And the winters there are worse by far than our winters in Wyoming, where the temperature is much colder but there's no humidity. And it's not as biting, it's it's much easier to warm up especially if you're in the sun. Whereas like if I tried to climb in the Red in in temperatures like we get in Wyoming? Not a chance, not going to happen. It's going to be, it's so biting. Yeah, I don't know if it's like that in the Blue Mountains. But...

Lee Cujes  1:08:46

Oh, absolutely. Not for me. For me, it is June, June, July, August. Those months are... look, they're probably maybe other months when, I was gonna say, when the hardest routes go down. I'm not sure that that's really true. I think it's still shoulder season when the hardest of the absolute hardest routes go down. But like a lot of hard bouldering goes on in those in those months, people are out bouldering. And, you know, it is that thing that managing your body temperature and figuring out how you can climb in cold conditions, I think allows you to probably and foot for dog like would be maximizing your performance. He's going to do his best climbing when it's when it's really cold. I think that's a skill if you're interested in getting into that kind of style of climbing and not in the Blue Mountains, but probably everywhere. I think it's a useful skill to develop. I'm not sure that I necessarily have it. I'm still looking for you know, synthetic or down pants to buy because I tried to pair the other day and it just felt like a game changer while I was on delay. Yeah, especially

Kris Hampton  1:09:51

if it's windy and cold.

Lee Cujes  1:09:52

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Kris Hampton  1:09:54

We've got, there's a couple more I want I really want to get to, but first let's stop at Will Vidlers comment here 'holding glue.' And you mentioned standing on glue, lots of glue in the mountains just because of the nature of the stone. I don't remember really seeing any..

Lee Cujes  1:10:11

Good. Yeah, no, that's um, I'm happy to say that it's the routes there... I think you could do a whole holiday, like a whole trip and you could climb 100 climbs, and never see any glue and never grab any glue and never stand on any glue. That's totally feasible in certain, certain areas. And certain routes, definitely have some glue. And generally, it would be used to, in some cases, reinforce a hold that was going to going to come off. Yeah. And that's when you kind of they might have used the glue to sort of go behind a flake or something. And then some of it has come out on top of the flake or something like that. So there's a few sort of almost infamous examples, like there would be almost anywhere, right? Maple is a great example, you know that there's glue everywhere. But in general, hopefully most of it should be hidden because it's like, for example, you're bolting a multipitch and there's a huge flake and that flake is the only way that this whole thing goes, you really don't want, to make sure that the flake doesn't, doesn't come off. And so in the Blue Mountains, what we would do is we would pin that flake to the wall by using, you know, a stainless rod and glue. So you're essentially bolting the feature to the cliff, where we are sort of industrial artists in that sort of skill set. And if we do it well you shouldn't know. Because we patch everything and it's invisible. And it means that there, we don't create dangerous situations in pulling, pulling holds and bits of bits of cliff off. So yeah, there's an there's an element of industrial stabilization that happens on on a lot of the routes and the measures. But by the same token, you know, like every everybody that bolts through anywhere is kind of considered to them, or they probably don't consider themselves an artist, but they are because they're sort of creating this this thing out of out of a cliff and figuring out how moves go together. And on really soft rock, we want to make sure that those holds don't go anywhere. So yeah, there's an element of glue from here and there.

Kris Hampton  1:12:20

Frankly, I think it's pretty hard to go to any major climbing area in the world and not find glue.

Lee Cujes  1:12:26

I'd say it's probably, it's better than most and worse than than some i'm sure. Yep.

Kris Hampton  1:12:33

Alright. Last Last community comment here is a great one, comes from Lee Cossey, who's also been on the podcast. And he says, in reference to max indoor redpoint. So if you're coming from the gym, you're coming to the Blue Mountains, here are the things to consider. You'll need to be able to crimp two grades harder than you want to climb in the Blue Mountains. The resting on jugs is about equal to the grade that you're climbing in the gym. And your power endurance, one grade easier.

Lee Cujes  1:13:07

Yeah, and I think that's probably because most indoor routes are built to like roped routes are built to zap power endurance. Yeah, so they tend to be power endurance heavy, because a good set is that like I think, I think a comp route in a gym they build, every move is getting harder and you're splitting climbers and you're having cruxes towards the top of the route. Guess what that is? It's pretty much power endurance, right in a nutshell. So given that gym routes are super power endurance heavy, he's probably saying dial it back a little bit, you probably won't need that much at that level. But you'll need to and what you don't often do in the gym is like hanging out at jug rests, right, kind of like have a quick shake and move on. Probably you would implement a little bit more. Or if you're doing circuits on your bouldering wall, throw in some resting on a horizontal and doing shaking for a minute and a half or two minutes and then continuing the circuit or do that on a route. and then for crimping, he's not wrong like you probably want a couple of levels above what your anticipated redpoint would be.

Kris Hampton  1:14:06

and frankly I mean even at least in the gyms I went to in Australia, which were quite a few as well as gyms here in the States, it's pretty hard to find that incut crimps in a lot of gyms now they're mostly big, big blobbier holds, which I really love and I think is really valuable. But the skill of crimping is best trained by crimping. 

Lee Cujes  1:14:42

Yeah, and if you can't, if you can't do it on routes because your gym doesn't, you know, you have an amazing modern gym that's using huge volumes and huge holds and that don't set crimp routes. Then at least think about think about what you're doing on the fingerboard think about the position. There's a lot of talk on this but don't get too don't get too wound up in the details. but at least so if you predominantly are kind of open handing on a large edge on, on the fingerboard for your repeaters or something like to have like a repeater type protocol, that's fine. But I would also throw in in the lead up to the trip, I would throw in, maybe keep your feet on the ground if you need to, I would throw in some actual, like, get your thumb up over your finger and go for some actual full crimping. too and not, You're not, the aim is not to build muscle, the aim is to build good form and to get muscle memory about the position. Yeah, okay, so you're trying that you're training, you're training, being comfortable, yeah, in that, in that sort of high angle crimp. And look, just do a little bit of that. And a great thing to use would be something like a a mic, you know, a set of micros, so an eight mil or a 10 mil edge, even if you're just doing it, you don't have to hang, you can just keep your feet on the ground and just gradually load those up and try to keep good form in the in the crimp as you're doing that. And just to train yourself that that's what a crimp is. Because if you're doing a lot of open handling stuff, you might be getting some good sort of muscle building happening. And that's good. And you might be building some endurance if you're using repeaters. But you are leaving yourself open to needing to crimp and you being kind of unfamiliar in it, and the transfer might not work so well. Yeah. So when I was training for recently for, you know, for a route that had some really small crimps, I used to a tiny little micro that I bolted to a block of wood and was lifting, just did some lifting some weights off the ground with that. And it just it kind of it was painful. Because of obviously, I was actually using a four mil crimp because it's just what I had, which is a tiny little razor blade. And I just worked up to that and it did two things: sort of taught me the position. But it also did some skin prep for me as well, like it was almost biting into my skin. No, I wouldn't recommend that people use a 4 mil edge. But um, you could use a small, while I'm talking a half pad, everyone's different, but a half pad, something like that would be would be fine. And just just load it up and teach yourself how to how to crimp

Kris Hampton  1:17:25

And I think it also builds pain tolerance as well, which is certainly something I encountered in the mountains. After you've climbed a few days. pain tolerance. You You alluded to it before, but I think if you can climb on like holds that maybe don't feel super comfortable to grab, like if you have your own Woody and you've got some uncomfortable holds, a lot like some of the moon board 2016 holds. That's going to be really valuable for you to learn to just grab things despite it hurting your skin. or hurting to grab not necessarily injuring your tendons kind of pain, but but just isn't comfortable to grab. It's valuable.

Lee Cujes  1:18:12

Definitely, yeah, yes, skin and crimping the big ones. Yep. And what we see as well is like, I've noticed this as other people might have noticed that their area, but at a certain grade range, the ability, or at every grade range, the ability to hit a hold, to take a hold, and not move on that hold. Yeah, so not be milking around and not to be like throwing and having your hand slide down that hold. The ability to sort of take a hold slightly more in control and not move on it is a big, is a big factor in how much pain is then transferred to the climber. So you'll, if you're trying something that's a bit beyond your limit, you're moving around on the holds a lot, you're sliding on the holds, and you might have one try, and it's just too painful to climb. But then you'll watch somebody that you know has a couple of grades margin on that route and they're doing laps. And they're not... you speak to them and you're like it, that super painful crimp, like how did you? there just like, No, it's not a problem at all. And the reason is this super controlled with the way they take the hold. And that matters at every grade, pretty much. And so as your ability improves, if you've got a little bit of margin on that route, you're more in control on the holds, there's far less pain. Yeah, so that's just super something to consider if you're trying and maybe it's obvious if you're trying quite hard, you try and be on projects that are really difficult. There's almost it's almost guaranteed that you're going to be moving around on the holds more and you're going to encounter more pain. So keep that in mind with route choice.

Kris Hampton  1:19:55

Yeah, and just a quick note on that before we take a break here. Some One thing I noticed watching what was his name flashing Tiger cat,

Lee Cujes  1:20:04

Jorge Diaz-Rullo. 

Kris Hampton  1:20:06

I love how you say that. And, and it sort of rings back to the comments that some of the community made like Nicole said, you know, high step and lock off strength is good. I think understanding how to control your body and put yourself in these positions where you have control while reaching for the next hold. But then being able to bust out of that when you need to for a move or two. like watching Jorge do Tiger Cat, he's in control the vast majority of the time until there are a few moves where he has to be dynamic. Or he's going into the mode where he's just lunging and latching things because he's pumped. So I think understanding how to control positions is really valuable. And something like our sloth drill is really good at that, you know, forcing you to climb slow and grind through the tension a little bit will teach you a lot about that. Nice. Alright, first off big thanks to all the folks from Instagram for putting in their suggestions on how to train for the Blue Mountains. we are going to take a break and we'll come back with must do routes, hidden gems, all of those things to get you psyched for your trip to the mountains, the MTNS's.

Kris Hampton  1:21:36

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Kris Hampton  1:22:14

Alright, we are back with Lee Cujes from Blackheath, would you would you say that you are simply a frother now, are you a proper frother? I know you once were a proper frother but I'm not sure if you still are.

Lee Cujes  1:22:32

No, might not be might have lost some of the froth. It's down to like a fine foam you might find on a on a nice Australian flat white.

Kris Hampton  1:22:43

I love it. Let's do must do routes. What in the area's archetypal style this is the thing that people are going to think about the Blue Mountains. This the route that comes to their mind, let's go 5.10 or under which is like 20/21? No...

Lee Cujes  1:23:03

Can we do can we do 5.0 to 5.9? 

Kris Hampton  1:23:07

Yeah, you can do all of those.

Lee Cujes  1:23:08

cool. So like 5.0 to 5.9, because there's some.

Kris Hampton  1:23:12

does 1 start at 5.0? 

Lee Cujes  1:23:15

No, it doesn't. 5.0 is around 3 or 4. So we know really we need like 5.-2 to equate to like a 1. And I'm not I don't I'm not holding this in my head people I'm using a the grade conversion scale on thecrag.com and look, the Blue Mountains has some of the best Easy, easy routes. I mean, if I had to pick an area in the world that I've been to, in all my travels that has the single best, easiest routes ever, it would be Arapiles. It has just stunning, amazing, amazing, amazing rock with amazing gear. It's all trad. Yeah, you know those easy climbs, they are the best. But the Blue Mountains has a few bangers in the easy grades, the quality picks Yeah. So for a trend and for these I'll give a few categories and I'm going to... look, if you're local, don't give me shit about routes that I missed out on here. They're going to anyway, they're going to anyway but I don't want to hear about it. There'll be some that I missed but here we go. And these are this is the Gospel According to Lee, not the gospel according to everybody. Trad multipitch: Cave Climb. Grade: 5.6, 2 pitch long multipitch, 50 meters high, narrow neck. Why is it great? Rap down, climb up, climb inside the cliff in a huge corridor, climb back into the cliff and then pop out like in a big U shape and then finish up the top pitch. so you completely lose sight of of everything as you like squirming through the bowels of the earth. So good. Do it on a hot day. It's, it's cool in there, you're inside the cliff. It's fantastic. The other one that gets done all the time, and it's always guided on, And you did it with me. It was called Sweet Dreams. Yeah. So that's, um, they give that advice that they give that 5.7, 6 pitches. It's basically like you couldn't, you know, most climbers, if that's your level, take all your stuff and be ready. If that's way below your level, Just do it on your tennis shoes and have a great day out. It's fantastic.

Kris Hampton  1:25:31

And I don't, just real quick - on that route, I don't remember if it was the last pitch or not. I think it was, might have been that's like, a little steeper and just...?

Lee Cujes  1:25:42

what we did, I think it's called Sweet Nightmare, which was like a slight variation. So at the last pitch, and look, if anyone's planning on doing this route, the original goes right into a kind of a chimney crack type thing. There was a very unfortunate recent fatality there. It's loose rock, I would avoid that. And I would climb the bolts on the left face for the last pitch. It was much nicer. And then that takes the grade up to about like a 5.8, 5.9, guys. Last pitch.

Kris Hampton  1:26:10

And then that last pitch was amazing. 

Lee Cujes  1:26:11

Yeah, that's the way to do it. And then for for Trad single pitch in that same bracket. You've got honey dip at zigzag. Yeah, super, super cool route on Trad with like one bolt or you pull the lip of a roof at 5.6. And then you know, blast up this, this long corner face above. I thought that was amazing. And then what? 5.10?

Kris Hampton  1:26:38

Well, I think you've still got sport under...?

Lee Cujes  1:26:42

No. No, don't even. No, I don't know about that. Yes, there's a few things bits and pieces. If you do want to climb around that level, and you want to climb sport routes, I would head out to the mezzaluna block area out at Mount Victoria. And I would climb all the all the bolted routes there and you will need to take your wallplates for for that place. That's that's a cool place to go. And there's a whole stack of routes around the kind of around that 5.8ish, 5.8 up to even maybe 5.8 to 10b. And they're really good. Really, really nice, awesome setting you're looking at over the valley, as you do with a lot of the Blue Mountains, some cracks, but mezzaluna block.

Kris Hampton  1:27:24

Cool. Yeah. And then 5.10 is what, like 19/20?

Lee Cujes  1:27:29

5.10 were talking sort of 18, 18 through the easiest end of the 21. So let's say 18 to 20 basically. So sports single pitch and I've for some of this I used thecrag.com to see what people thought was really good as well. For sports single pitch: fairly modern route put up by Neil Monteith at sublime point called Theory of Negativity. People love it. It's essentially a set of orange huecos up a, up a, up a face that's about 25 meters high or something like that. The, the punters love it. So yeah, we give that grade 20 So that sits around that sort of 10c, 10d area, it splits the splits the grade there. For sport multipitch: The one that people love in this grade range is called Bunny Bucket Buttress. It's grade 18. So that's 10a, it's eight pitches, all bolts, at pierce's pass. you can be there in kind of, well 25 minutes to the car park from Blackheath. And then you wander down in about another 25 minutes or so. And you've got eight pitches and it's super consistent. Really cool. Really awesome afternoon out or morning, depending on how you do it.

Kris Hampton  1:28:46

So cool. 

Lee Cujes  1:28:48

in the 5.11...

Kris Hampton  1:28:51

This is like 20, 21, 22?

Lee Cujes  1:28:54

Yeah, we're talking kind of it starts that 11a is kind of your 21 And then you're right the way through into top end 23 and easy 24 is around that, the 11d bracket. So for sport. Oh no, let's go trad single pitch: I picked a pick the Janicepts. 

Kris Hampton  1:29:15

I've heard of this. 

Lee Cujes  1:29:16

This is a famous, a famous Route at Mount Pennington like a historical route from I'm going to say the 70s Sorry if I got it wrong, and I think it was John Ewbank if I recall, I actually talk a little bit about it in a video I did on YouTube, where I just I do the on site with a GoPro on my helmet. So if you're interested in that one and you don't want to onsight it, you can have a look at that video. Otherwise you could... 

Kris Hampton  1:29:45

question here: do most of Blue Mountains climbers do both sport and Trad?

Lee Cujes  1:29:53

I think most Blue mountains climbers would be comfortable. Even if they were like pretty Elite level sport climbers, I reckon they'd be pretty comfortable on up to say like 12b trad around the mountains, that's kind of my take on it, I might be wrong there. But they, they wouldn't necessarily be always out doing both. 

Kris Hampton  1:30:16

got it. 

Lee Cujes  1:30:16

They might do a little bit of trad in the winter because mount Piddington is a really cool place to go, where they can do a few things. But if you ask them, have they done these routes, they probably did you know, 15 years ago or something like that, they've actually done the trad things that like the the standards, but they might not be a regular trad climber now. But of course, there's a huge contingent of people that would go out and do both. Umm. Yep. So the Janicepts would be would be the pick. And that is sitting around that kind of 11a grade. And then for sports single pitch: Now this is a tricky one, because they probably this is... like 5.11 I have to say, it's probably where the mountains really shines. It's really amazing. Like, if you climb 11c, 11d, there is so much for you in the blue mountains.

Kris Hampton  1:31:08

I climbed a lot of that grade while I was there, 

Lee Cujes  1:31:10

I think it's where it's really good. And of course, it's good in high grades as well. But like if I had to pick a grade range, like it's really amazing around that kind of, you know, 11c through 12b. Really heaps and heaps of good routes.

Kris Hampton  1:31:23

So it's 23 through 25.

Lee Cujes  1:31:27

Exactly, yeah, there's so much good stuff. I picked for sport single pitch. And I had to really go to the video ref on this and go to thecrag and see it, made sure that that I was I was getting it right. There's a route down at porter's passed called the mind boggles which is like a 40 meter mega pitch and it's slab. And you know me, I'm not a slab dude. Right? I want things as steep as possible. This is an incredible pitch of rock climbing, really interesting and continuous. It's called the mind boggles, it's continually engaging. If your arms and calves don't pump, your brain just might. So it's those kind of pitches, really good. for sport multipitch at 5.11: I hedge my bets on this. So I've gone Smegadeth. it's like 200 plus meters as grade 23. So that's the 11c, 11d. And remember, we kind of sandbag in Australia. So if you see a grade, you want to just like mentally add a grade to it. That's fine. You can do that. Yeah, do whatever you want. Yep, it just be be ready. You're not going to find a lot of soft touches for the grade in Australia compared to the states. So six pitches, Smegadeath, a Mike Law route. So a lot of people have heard heard of Mike - Mike law. Yeah, total, total legend of the sport. He did a lot of the multi pitches out of pierces pass, he was responsible for he he was also responsible for putting in a lot of really shitty gear. So like bad carrots and things like this, he would say that they stood the test of time, and they have, a lot of them, except for the ones that didn't. And then now we're getting around to rebolting. So this Smegadeth route has just been rebolted. So instead of carrying 20 bolt brackets in your chalk bag, and not being able to chalk up, you can just clip the fantastic rings that were replaced by SRC rebolting. so do that route if you're not short, it's quite reachy. if you are a bit on the shorter stature, do Hotel California instead. It's like 10 pitches or so. Like really a quite a long one with some amazing traversing above. Like a monstrous roof. It sits around that kind of 11b kind of grade. 

Kris Hampton  1:33:44

Same crag?

Lee Cujes  1:33:45

pierces pass Yep, same same crag.

Kris Hampton  1:33:47

and then moving on to the 24/25 through 28? is that right?

Lee Cujes  1:33:57

So if we're in the, we're in the 5.12, So the 5.12 is going to take us from 24 up to up to 27. Okay, yeah. 27. So, we're starting to get into the hard stuff now. So for trad single pitch, I haven't done the route. But I'm confident to say that the thin line of reprieve at Bank's ampitheater is probably the pick. It's an enormous, you rap in and then you climb, you can Google this to see some photos. You'll be blown away. Like if you want to climb the most amazing, like a corner that you can see from miles away. That has perfect trad all the way up the corner at that grade, so at the grade of like 12a, It's a mega pitch of rock climbing. Cool, totally amazing. For that one involves quite a bit of like, it's fairly involved access. So you would like talk to someone or you get some idea about how to go there and do it. don't don't think that it's just going to be something you're going to do within five minutes of the cafe. But if you Google that one Um, and you're that kind of person, you will probably make the effort to go out and do it. For sport single pitch, I hedged here too. So I knew, you know, I really think the bell super crag is an amazing cliff, it's got like 170 routes, it's fairly, it's a bit a little bit more recently developed, like in the last decade or so. And a route put up there called the reality dysfunction is kind of like 40 degrees overhanging the whole way from bottom to top and on monstrous holds, with then a thinner finish that throws off the throws off the redpoint. it's totally amazing that route. And the other one that I just picked happens to be, that everyone loves, happens to have that same character, which is really steep big holds. And that's called the way of all flesh. I've, I always look at which you... 

Kris Hampton  1:35:55

I've climbed on that one.

Lee Cujes  1:35:57

Which you you got on last time. So that's a really popular one. There's a Batman start off the first bolt, which is not my favorite thing in the world, but and that gives you the grade of 12c, it's 13 if you start it from, from the floor, but that's sort of fairly infrequently done.

Kris Hampton  1:36:15

Yeah, that's how I was trying it. It's quite hard. Yeah.

Lee Cujes  1:36:19

I still haven't done the route because I only want to do it climbing it from the ground and I've been on a couple of times and I'll get to it at some point. There's a lot of climbing in the mountains. For trad multipitch, there is a banger. 

Kris Hampton  1:36:33

I've heard of this one as well, 

Lee Cujes  1:36:34

so this is this is Samarkand and so it's five pitches, it's got it does have the odd bolt but it's mostly gear, it's definitely a trad route despite the couple of bolts. pierces pass, again, really pretty pretty damn good for this grade like in the in the higher grades it's not like we were seeing we don't have the same volume of trad routes as we do in the easier grades. So the things to choose from are sort of more few and far between. But Samarkand is excellent. For a sport multipitch, my pick at this grade range and it look, it's at the top of the grade bracket so we're talking like you know solid 12c, is a route called stiletto put up by who most people will know as Dr. J. from the old rock and ice columns. 

Kris Hampton  1:37:25

Yes, that's where I first came across him for sure.

Lee Cujes  1:37:27

exactly. 

Kris Hampton  1:37:28

His 'dodgy elbows' article. 

Lee Cujes  1:37:30

Oh, yeah, it's helped helped many. Yeah, hammer hammer curls. And so yeah, that that route Stiletto at Perry's lookdown, again, really. So it's a different different Cliff than than pierces pass. It's on the other side, you actually look across the valley to pierces pass on the other side. So Perry's lookdown. Amazing, orange, probably some of the best rock. If you're a lover of really good rock and good geology. That route, the six pitch route has some of the best rock in the Blue Mountains. So it's most of the pitches on that hover around the 12c and then the crux pitch is 12d. So it's really really good. And then we're now, we're really getting up there. So for 5.13, Let's see where that's that's kind of sits as 28 through to 31. So for Trad single pitch now this is where I start getting into the area where I go well, I haven't done this, but it looks totally amazing. So the route Mother Earth and again this will be one that you can you can google some photos of this, some amazing photos done by Simon Carter of first free ascensionist Jacques Bedouin just recently freed, he had previously done it with the gear in place and then is now gone back and done it placing the gear. and amazing crack going through like a bowl shaped amphitheater kind of thing. And that's out on the newne's plateau. it's going to be, in like a day this will be like a more difficult to access location, it's not close to town. But if you were the person that that feels like sort of 13d on gear is what you're you're into, You'd be able to, you'll actually just contact Jacques and ask him about it and he'll probably want to go out and belay. So that that could be something for for somebody that really wants to hang their whole body weight off finger locks for the entirety of the of the roof through a roof kind of thing. Sports single pitch: now we're throwing it way back to one of the original old classics of the mountains called hairline 2000. This is this is a 28 this 13a, what a banger grade, at Diamond falls. Diamond falls itself being probably, it was the original Elphinstone, so it was the original hard man and woman cliff where all the crushers went to every weekend, it's become a little bit more difficult to access as of today, like, well, 2023 or whatever, because we had a landslide that washed away part of the road. People are still going out there though, you can still and particularly with mountain bikes, it's it's less of a deal. But um, you can walk out there or you could take a mountain bike to bypass that landslide. you just can't drive like we used to.

Kris Hampton  1:40:27

But this is the one where there's still a car out there beyond the...? 

Lee Cujes  1:40:31

that was the story. so like the this landslide happened. It's the narrow neck plateau is a place that people go to go to the various climbing areas and they also go to go doing these longer hikes that might be a day and sometimes can be multi day hikes. So you would often drive your car out onto the plateau and do whatever you're going to do and then come back and pick up your car and drive home. So this landslide happened, which washed away the start of the road and I'm talking like it's like a pit that is 10 meters deep. And by about, you know, 20 meters long or something, then there's no way in the universe, they're going to repair that anytime soon. In any case, there was a white car left in the car park way out there and everyone just was walking past this car going, 'well, they're never getting that car back.' I mean, they're gonna helicopter it out. And I mean, if you've got to imagine you've got car insurance and you're like, hey, I want to put in a claim. My car's fine, my car is absolutely fine. But I do need a helicopter rescue of my car. I don't think that's covered. 

Kris Hampton  1:41:35

I don't think so.

Lee Cujes  1:41:35

it's like force force majeure. God, and then in more recent times, it has come to our attention the car is now upside down, has been flipped over. It's been flipped over. And that was always going to happen. Oh, sure. So poor guys. Anyway, so hairline 2000 at Diamond Falls is is a classic and there's plenty of other routes on that wall. That wall is well known for sort of the 5.12 through really to 14d it's, it's stacked. That's where we always called it the RED project. Yep. Or Alexander Alexander Megos eventually came through to create Australia's first 35 or 9a or  14d You know, famously so that's sitting on that wall as well and there's stacks of other really good routes there as well. 5.13 Sport multipitch: This is where self promotion comes in, isn't it? So I'm gonna go with Trail of Tears which is my route, pierces pass, five pitches. still, now I shouldn't say this, it's still waiting to see a second ascent. it's getting plenty of action but it's just not hasn't seen a clean second ascent and because, you know, one piece of rock breaks on the climb, you know and that the ascent's gone so yeah, five pitches, get onto it, people, it's really good.

Lee Cujes  1:41:39

And I suspect we'll have some photos of you. I think I think I used a photo of you on that route for a past episode so.

Lee Cujes  1:43:09

yeah, I had I had fun developing that and I had even more fun climbing it. see that sits around that the crux pitch of that is around that 13a and it's got probably, I can't think of many pitches that I've enjoyed more than the third pitch of that particular route which comes in at 12d. like a 35 meter completely ongoing pump up this you know, overhanging wall that just goes forever across incredible terrain. Really good. Yeah, even if you just went in to do that pitch, it's almost worth it. The other amazing route in this, in this grade bracket, is called again has seen a little bit of action, but I'm not sure how many ascents it's had beyond the first ascent, is called scurvy. Tom O'Halloran route which a lot of people will be familiar with Tom as Australia's climbing Olympian, with a great YouTube channel as well. So that's grade 30 So it's sitting at 5.13c, seven pitches. Perry's lookdown. So the crux and my understanding of that route, I haven't been on it yet. Insane rock, the crux pitch is that grade and then some of the other it's less sustained, you got a lot of easier climbing and then a really hard Crux pitch but there's still a lot to it. that seven pitches at Perry's, it's gonna be a big day. And then in the 5.14, 5.14 i started to tap out. I'm not really qualified but what I can say is I've spent quite a bit of time on the route called Tigercat at Elphinstone, 8c or 33. That's famous one, famous one it's 5.14b put up by Lee Cossey. very coveted by people because it's at Elphinstone, it's a king line. It's like 30 meters high, totally amazing. And the the moves are all very, they are very approachable and they feel kind of, it lulls you into thinking you're getting close - you can do them off the rope. You can do it in sections, you're doing all the things, but that redpoint remains elusive. It's a it's an amazing, amazing rock climb, as are virtually all the routes on the Elphinstone wall. They're all amazing and but if you had to pick one to sink your teeth into around that level, that'd be the one to do and then you could start getting into getting into the others.

Kris Hampton  1:45:27

Yeah, I'll definitely have a link to the video of Jorge flashing Tigercat with Jake Bresnahan giving him beta and the belay and turn the volume up while you're watching. It's brilliant. Yeah, it's and that's from Rumblr?

Lee Cujes  1:45:44

Rumblr. Yeah, yeah. Breckin does an amazing job with Rumblr, and he puts himself into some harness, hang syndrome, uncomfortable positions to get the footage that we all want to that we all want to see. So he did a good job with that one.

Kris Hampton  1:45:58

Cool. if you had to pick single personal favorite of any grade? I know it's hard to pick one. Since there's 7000 routes there, maybe you get to pick two. Alright. What do you pick?

Lee Cujes  1:46:11

Alright, for me, it's going to be Green Grass at Elphinstone. This is a this is a grade twenty... What do they give it? Okay, so they give it 29. So 13b, I, you know, it might be it might be 13c, might be 30. Might be 29. Might be 30. Green Grass another Lee Cossey route. Amazing. Just incredible 30 meter pitch that it has, features a massive drive by move in the in the middle. And I think like for that kind of steep, big hold dynamic pumper climbing, which I love that sort of Euro style, it doesn't get much better than that route. And I think my comment when I logged that in my logbook was I wish there was 100 more just like it, would just be so good. And Elphinstone is that kind of crag where because that's around the level where I start to, I'm starting to top out, but if you don't tap out there and you're able to go into those next few, three grades? that's what you do get, you just get more of the same kind of thing. Yeah, so it's just the guys you can see the guys that climb around that - not guys, people - Andrea and everybody else that's out there climb, climbing, you know, it's around that 8c level. It's just Yeah, it's it's mind blowing.

Lee Cujes  1:46:13

What about multi pitches, if you chose a favorite multi pitch?

Lee Cujes  1:47:11

If I'd love to choose my own, but no, I can't. And I have to say like of the things that I've been on, stiletto takes the cake. and it takes the cake for a couple of reasons: One is I'm a huge fan of like amazing rock quality if I get to get on like amazing stone. and stiletto has more of it than any of the other multi pitchers that I've been on. So there's that, and I also love it when things are quite continuous. So it's not like a really easy pitch and then a hard pitch and then a really easy pitch. I like it when it's really consistent. And stiletto is really consistent from bottom, well you know there is a tiny little scramble out pitch at the top. But apart from that, it's super consistent bottom to top.

Lee Cujes  1:47:11

So not surprising both of those are from Australian climbing legends. Lee Cossey and Dr. J.

Lee Cujes  1:48:28

Yep.

Kris Hampton  1:48:30

Overlooked classics. What are what are a couple of hidden gems, if people want to get away from the crowds, they but they still want to claim something amazing?

Lee Cujes  1:48:40

I'd say you've put me on the spot here. I don't have any notes about this one. Maybe this is just where I recommend all my own routes.

Kris Hampton  1:48:48

Is Cave Climb popular?

Lee Cujes  1:48:49

No. I wouldn't say that. 

Kris Hampton  1:48:51

I remember you and Sam talking about it as not a popular route. So maybe that's one?

Lee Cujes  1:48:55

that's definitely one, I think. walking out to somewhere like if you want to, if it's talking about like escaping the crowds to find something, walk out to a cliff called Banksy. fairly, more recently, recently developed,primarily by sort of Neil Monteith and Paul Thompson, that cliff and again that's around the like 5.11 breaking into 5.12 range of pumper long over slightly overhanging routes. That's a really good you've got like 20 or 30 routes to choose from. Banksy is somewhere to check out. Quite hard on the skin. But you're not going to have the crowds that you might see on a nice day at Boronia point, for example.

Kris Hampton  1:49:44

Yeah, yeah. Alright. If you're going on holiday, you've got a group of your friends you all climb different grades. Where do you go?

Lee Cujes  1:49:52

If if it's not too hot, or you want sun, so it's that time of year it's It's always gonna be, well, actually pretty much year round, it's going to be really busy at Upper Shipley. it's super close to the carpark, it's super close to the cafe. And if we're saying we want a spread of grades, it has grades ranging from 13 to 33. So we're talking from f5.6 all the way through to 14b, all on the one piece of wall, unbroken by anything. And it's totally unique. It isn't, it kind of starts steep at one end, and then ends up slabby at the other end. So you can all, it's almost, you want the hardest route, just walk to the far left end, or the easiest route walk to the far right. And it's almost like that. And it's generally vertical to slabby climbing, and then the steeper routes are just slightly overhanging power endurance test pieces. so Shipley is really good. And that's we're talking 84 routes on that cliff. The other cliff that I mentioned earlier was called Bell super crag. So this is 170 routes. And we're talking kind of 16 to 31. So that's like 5.8 through 13d. What's good about it is that it's composed of a whole range, it's in a canyon. So there's, which I always love, because you have the choice of sun or shade, right. And that also means that you have kind of the choice of summer and winter, depending because it'll give you what you want at any time of the year. It's a whole range of closely packed sub sectors. Some of them are upper tiers. So you'll like walk above, and climb like an overhanging section of wall with even a sector below. you have to be a little bit careful about dropping rock, but they kind of work together. So you have these closely packed sub sectors, each offering different types of climbing. Which is really cool. Very popular area, good name for it, then yeah, it's cool. It's really popular, despite the kind of 35-40 minute walk in to get there for that one, and probably about a 20 minute driver as well from town. So bell is really good. And the one that I mean, I hesitate to recommend it, it's very good, but it gets very busy. But the reason I recommend it is because again, same as same as Shipley, we've got the same grade range. So from 13 to 33. And that's 58 routes at Boronia point, it's steep and shady sport climbing with a short walk in. It's always gonna be the rock is also really good. It's really hard and marbley. But if it's a nice, you know, nice afternoon on a hot day, at Boronia it's going to be extremely busy. And a lot of the routes share the same starts which exacerbates the problem of busyness. But yeah, don't believe the, don't believe the tripe is the classic 8a/13b type thing and it's yeah, it's well, well worth well worth a look.

Kris Hampton  1:52:59

I love how you just gave two grades neither of which were Australian.

Lee Cujes  1:53:04

That's good. Aussies aren't gonna listen to this. So it's okay. They don't need to know. 

Kris Hampton  1:53:11

I bet they do. Alright, favorite rest day activity around the mountains?

Lee Cujes  1:53:18

Well, Blue Mountains is a World Heritage area. So like from a natural environment point of view, Obviously, you've got the climbing, that's great, but they're not just gonna give it World Heritage status just because of you know, rock climbing and cliffs. There's plenty of walks, hikes, like historic walks that go back to like, where they were cutting into the side of the cliff to make the path and everything back in like 1907 and all this. And it was also where, the Blue Mountains range was where the original explorers of the country pushed over the range for the first time. So there's a lot of historical things to go and check out in terms of walks in areas and things like that. canyoning which might in the US be called canyoneering, or I'm confusing it with canyoneering from The Simpsons is canyoneering. Okay, so in Australia, it's called canyoning, same thing. Plenty of that to be done. If you're there in summer. And you want to get wet, and cold waterfalls to check out. Like, I have no problem like when my mum and grandma come down to visit, I can just take them to a new lookout of a nice waterfall. I can take them you know, there's plenty of those types of things to go and do like the natural wonders side of things is pretty, it's pretty replete. mountain biking, I didn't treat it as a rest activity, but mountain biking and trail running both really popular activities outside climbing, if you want to if you're a multi sport athlete, and then otherwise, if it's a rest day thing, and you're new to the area, just drive and go and explore each of the small towns and see what they've got to offer.

Kris Hampton  1:55:01

Yeah, we really liked exploring all the different towns you know, maybe particularly Blackheath in Katoomba. Blackheath's got some great little shops and little restaurants we really enjoy going to events and Hollandaise gallery. The day gallery there. Yep. talking to them about the art. climber owned. It's always cool to go see different climber owned businesses. Katoomba had a great liquor store, liquor store, a beer store, one of the two.

Lee Cujes  1:55:37

Yeah, they got a brewery in there called Mountain culture which is, which is pretty popular. And it's, they have funnily enough, Tom O'Halloran has his own beer. Oh, nice, called kitten mittens, which is one of our hardest routes, so named after the route of Elphinstone. So yeah, they've got there's, there's a real good climber connect with with mountain culture and those guys, and they're going from strength to strength. So good to see again, climber owned, and climber affiliated businesses doing really well. And they've won a lot of awards for for the brewing that they're doing there, which is pretty cool. So if you're into breweries, and yeah, the microbrewery kind of seen that some that's a thing.

Kris Hampton  1:56:17

Cool. Man, I think. I think we've given them a ton of information. One thing I want to know, though, is, how do you know how many mood boards are in town? We were trying to think of this the other night, and Blackheath must be one of the highest per capita, highest mood boards per capita of any town in the world. It's got to be close.

Lee Cujes  1:56:48

I know, I can only speak from my street. I know, there's at least three for my street. I know there's at least three in my street. But in saying that, yeah, I can, I can easily rattle them off another, you know, three or four on top of that. So then we're already at like, you know, seven in and just, you know, within a very, very small radius. So yeah, it's got to be it's got to be right up there.

Kris Hampton  1:57:15

Do people have different sets? Are everybody using 2016 Sets?

Lee Cujes  1:57:20

No, I think most people probably now have migrated to 2019. The most the most recent as of time of recording. There's there's rumors in the, in the, in the ether about the new set coming soon. That might be at 2024 sets, something along those lines. But yeah, for right now, I think most people are in 2019. But I'm lucky enough to have both. So I'm running 2019 and 2016. At the minute.

Kris Hampton  1:57:42

Yeah, I wish people could have seen how you started rubbing your hands together when you said there might be a 2024 set coming.

Lee Cujes  1:57:49

kind of white. I was trying to I was trying to set up like a polling thing on the website. So you know, as soon as it drops, like I get a notification. Yeah, you know, and I'm just like, bye, bye. Bye. Bye, bye, bye.

Kris Hampton  1:58:01

You might still be a proper frother for mood board culture.

Lee Cujes  1:58:08

Look, I find the art of training, the enjoyment of training, the enjoyment of hanging out in the shed, where I get to climb on my moon board, hang on my hangboard and play my trumpet is still more enjoyable on a weekly basis than then going out and getting cold and getting wet. Is it the cliff? It really is. And it's taken me a long time to realize that all the things that we do to prepare for climbing and that's what this podcast is all about. What are we doing, the minutiae of yeah, getting deep into the prep for the training and proper frothing, exactly like for a trip. That's the fun of it. That's the, its journey and destination. That is the journey the destination is just the climbing bit that happens and like outwards, like that's great. And I lost love climbing. It's awesome. But I've learned to really appreciate the journey, which is like the prep, the training.

Kris Hampton  1:59:03

Yeah, I love the I love the training and the you know, considering how to prepare for areas and I know so many people love it. And that's why I, that's why I do these things. And I appreciate you taking the time to sit down until the wee hours of the morning to to properly froth over over blue mountain climbing. So thanks, man. 

Lee Cujes  1:59:28

My pleasure. Yeah, if you see me out and about in the mountains and you're out for a trip, come over and say hi, introduce yourself. I'd love to chat with you. Yeah,

Kris Hampton  1:59:39

and if you go to the blog post, which we'll find a link to at the show notes. For this episode, you'll find more things. info about gyms and the local climbers coalition and advocacy group which is the ACA NSW That's New South Wales. Yep, crag care. And then we'll also have links to the SRC rebolting, I believe that's what it's called.

Lee Cujes  2:00:09

Yeah, yeah, if you're interested in I mean, it's just we have to be so onto it with the rebolting because of the softer rock. So if you're if you're keen to give a donation to those guys, they are one of the most active and passionate groups going around. So yeah, that'd be super appreciated, I'm sure.

Kris Hampton  2:00:30

Yeah, we'll also have links to a bunch of videos and lots of photos of the area as well as best restaurants and just all of the things where to stay in the area. So definitely check out that blog post. And as always, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook's, we're now on threads but there's not even a Twitter anymore. Now it's x. So this is the first podcast I've done where I have to say something different at the end.

Lee Cujes  2:01:04

We don't x, we don't x,

Kris Hampton  2:01:10

we scream like eagles.