It’s crazy to think that I did my first rock-climbing shoot at Coolum in January this year and now it’s August! My climbing photography has definitely improved this year, which I’m very proud of. The best part of shooting climbing is the variety of angles and composition you can play with - while still capturing the pure essence of stoke on a beautiful rock.

So, when one of my mates suggested we get a crew together for a trip to Serpent, a lesser-known crag on the Sunny Coast, I was down. Online, it was clear that we were dealing with a multi-colored wave rock perched in a sea of ferns. Looked stunning and I was hyped.

Which raised the question - why is it such an underrated place?

We had that discussion on the road-trip up to the area. The consensus was that;

it was a long way away, further than much more publicised and larger crags like Coolum
the approach was comparatively quite long (more than 2km) straight uphill
there weren’t a huge amount of routes for the effort of actually getting there

At least, this is what we hoped. There was a very real possibility that it would have been chossy, unsafe rock with not a lot going for it.

It ended up being a very vibey day with a lot of sends and a lot of effort. I loved the approach, as I do a lot more hiking than the average climber, the atmosphere of the area and the style of climbing. However, I definitely agree with the boy’s points of it being a once-a-every-six months sort of crag; you could easily project most of the difficult climbs in a weekend!

Additionally, some of the anchors on the left were rusted and an individual is projecting a lot of the far right, resulting in a further reduced number of routes.