I just got back from 10 days climbing at Mount Buffalo, a beautiful National Park in North East Victoria. This is an amazing place to visit: it has a great campsite with hot showers, a lake to swim in, and ever-entertaining Australian birdlife (with the exception of a couple of ravens who seemed to make it their mission to wake us up, by standing right by our tent crowing loudly at 5am every morning).

The park itself also has much to offer: a grand old chalet (currently closed, unfortunately), a spectacular gorge, kilometres of hiking trails, and acres of pristine granite.

For a few days we shared the company of Geoff Gledhill, a legend who has done more exploring and put up more routes at Buffalo than nearly anybody else. Geoff made life incredibly easy for us, giving us recommendations, and showing us around the place.

While we went up so many memorable climbs, the highlight for me was a 250 metre grade 17 called `Where angels fear to tread’, which followed a series of crack lines up a buttress deep in the gorge (bottom centre in the third photo). This was an amazing (and somewhat brutal) experience for me, particularly as my first experience in jamming was only 2 days prior.

I definitely want to head back to Buffalo, and highly recommend it as a great place to visit, even if you’re not interested in rock climbing. Hiking, biking, cross country skiing in winter, and hot showers - the place has it all.