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Went to Tibro today (Sunday 22/6/08) to do Black Orpheous - an old favourite of mine.

Things were going well. Eventually got to the top of the 2nd pitch ledge and tree belay. As my second was nearing the top of the pitch, I heard a sound above me, and noticed a smallish rock/pebble flying down from above, bouncing it's way to the base. I began to suspect that there might be another climbing party high up on the 3rd or 4th pitch, as I'd seen some fresh chalk marks on the climb.

I didn't think too much more about it, as it seemed to be an isolated rock fall. Then, as I was sorting my gear, getting ready to tackle the 3rd pitch, I heard a loud thump from below. It sounded like a rather sizeable rock had landed on the ground at the base of the east side of Tibro. This prompted me to look upwards, where I was greeted with a view of fist-sized rocks, rapidly hurtling towards us! We ducked and weaved as the shower of rocks just missed us.

Then it stopped. My partner and I looked at each other, and said "what the hell's going on?!". Then more rocks started coming down! A few missed us by centimeters, others were a few metres to the left or right. I started screaming "Oi! Watch out! Climbers below! Climbers below!". Then another lull. We gazed up nervously, and then another shower of rocks began. You could here some of the bigger ones thumping into the ground below. I started yelling more urgently, hoping it was people hurling rocks, rather than the mountain coming apart (I had the recent Beerwah rock fall in my mind - and was hoping Tibro was not experiencing the same thing). The onslaught lasted maybe 3 or 4 minutes, then abruptly stopped. We waited nervously for another ten minutes, not game to take our eyes off above. What freaked me the most was knowing that the 3rd pitch is right in the line of fire for the rock fall. We considered bailing, but figured we'd be no better off. I eventually set off, stringing the 3rd and 4th pitch together, ending up at Cave 3.

There was no sign of any climbers, or other people when I got there, but I looked at all of the loose rock that abounds at the mouth of the cave, wondering if some jerks had scrambled up the caves route and decided it would be fun to hurl rocks from the cave. I couldn't imagine climbers doing such a thing, and I can't recall having ever seen tourists on the caves route. My partner told me that as she was climbing the 3rd pitch, there was another one-off rock fall, somewhere far off to the right, possibly in the vicinity of the NE Buttress. The difference was that she actually heard someone yell "rock!" for that one.

As we decended down the caves route, I noticed that someone named Alex had scratched his/her name on the wall of the cave, and also wrote the date "6/08". Once again I couldn't imagine climbers vandalising the rock that way, supporting my suspicious that a tourist had recently been in the area.

When we got back to the base of Black Orpheous to collect our bags, we bumped into some other climbing buddies, who had also intended to climb Black Orpheous, but were put off by the rock fall in that area. Apparently they had heard me screaming, but couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

Needless to say, I was quite spooked by the experience, but I don't know whether to be angry at some unknown person(s), or whether to put it down to a natural rock fall occurence.