Member
The Canberra Climbers' Association is marking 60 years since the first recorded climb at Booroomba Rocks with a members' trad meet on 21 and 22 November 2026, two months after the crag's access road reopened following a closure that began in May.
The Canberra Climbers' Association (CCA) is holding a Booroomba Rocks 60th Anniversary Meet on the weekend of 21 and 22 November 2026, sixty years after the first recorded climb at one of the ACT's most popular granite crags. The meet is based at Honeysuckle Campground in Namadgi National Park, and it comes two months after Booroomba Rocks Road reopened following a closure that began in May. The details below come from the CCA's event page and news post as they stood on 23 October 2026.
According to the CCA's history of ACT climbing, members of the Canberra Touring and Walking Club first reached Booroomba Rocks in 1962, bush-bashing up the valley from Booroomba Station near Tharwa. The first recorded climb came in 1966, when Peter Aitchison soloed Aitchison's Needle after his own long walk up the valley.
Access changed in the late 1960s, when NASA and Australia's deep space programme built the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station a few kilometres to the south. Its roads let climbers drive to within a kilometre or two of the crags, and many of Booroomba's classics followed, among them Sunstroke, Outer Limit, Hermes, Possum and Integral Crack. Integral Crack, put up by Peter Aitchison and Peter Cocker, is graded only 19 but rivalled Janicepts in the Blue Mountains as the hardest climb in Australia at the time. By the mid-1970s Booroomba, Orroral Ridge and Gibraltar Peak were drawing many of the country's leading climbers, and in the 1980s, with most of the natural lines climbed, the next generation turned to the faces and slabs between them, adding routes such as Snickers and Smash Palace.
The CCA describes the weekend as a chance to climb some of the classic and historic routes while celebrating "the climbs and stories and fashions and gear from the past". It runs from 8am on Saturday 21 November to 4:30pm on Sunday 22 November, with camping already booked at Honeysuckle Campground, a sub-alpine forest site with toilets and some picnic tables but no power.
Five trip leaders will run the weekend, and the meeting time and place go to registered climbers.
Getting to Booroomba has been the hard part this year. According to the CCA, Parks ACT closed Booroomba Rocks Road, the unsealed road to the crag, from Monday 11 May 2026 for essential maintenance, with reopening planned for Saturday 30 May. It stayed shut for several months longer, and climbers reported it open again on theCrag on 25 September. Even with the road open, the cliffs take some reaching: the CCA describes an uphill 30-minute hike to the "top camp", then more walking to the base of the crags. Check Parks ACT alerts before driving out.
Booroomba is a predominantly trad area with few sport climbs, and its routes run from easy to extremely hard. The CCA's visitor guide describes single and multi-pitch climbs up to 150 metres, on natural gear and bolts, and recommends autumn, winter and spring for climbing in the ACT, singling out a sunny winter's day with good friction on Booroomba's granite. The area was caught in the Orroral Valley fire of January 2020, which burned about 80% of Namadgi National Park.
The standard guide, ACT Granite (second edition, edited by John Churchill and Mike Peck, 1997), is hard to find. The CCA says a new guidebook is under construction and that its authors hope to have it out in 2026, and the meet notice promises it is "coming out soon". Until then, the CCA points climbers to theCrag for route details.
The CCA's annual general meeting is on Wednesday 18 November at the Ainslie Football Club, with guest speakers on their climb of the Salathé Wall on El Capitan, and the Reel Rock 20 film tour reaches Canberra, in Fyshwick, on Tuesday 24 November. If you want to train for the granite first, Canberra's bouldering gyms and club roped walls are on our Canberra page, and the territory's other crags are on the ACT page.
The Rock Adventure Centre in Newtown, Geelong's indoor climbing centre since 2001, closes for good on Saturday 7 November 2026. Here's what is ending and where the city's climbers can go next, from Industry Boulders in Grovedale to the granite of the You Yangs.
Joe Rushton
Urban Climb Blackburn hosts the 2026 Australian Speed Climbing National Championships on 7 November, and Gravity Worx the Victorian State Speed Titles on 21 November. Here's what speed climbing is, who races, and how to enter or watch.
Joe Rushton
Since August 2024 Adelaide has gained three bouldering gyms: Urban Climb in a former Hindley Street cinema, a new Beyond Bouldering gym in Thebarton and Laneway Boulders in Stepney, and Adelaide's Bouldering Club has moved to Urban Climb. Here's what opened when, and what each offers.
Joe Rushton