19 February 2004
Welcome and thanks for tuning in to Sandbaggers for another episode of “Climbing Capers” starring all of your favourite characters, and some you probably don’t like too. (let’s face it, I only hang around with them because they climb). Hosted by everyone’s favourite climber: Me J
Last night we ventured out to The Buttress, where despite all of the area upgrades being undertaken like putting loose and slippery gravel on all of the descent paths which helps to increase the chance of twisting an ankle they have not installed an escalator yet. Geez! You would think that this would have been a priority too! I mean, we need to make these areas more accessible for bushwalkers don’t us? (Now listen here you Grammar Police out there, don’t go looking at the previous sentence and say that I am an illiterate fool who does not know how to write. I actually had written the sentence thus: “I mean, we need to make these areas more accessible for bushwalkers don’t we?” But spell check told me that this would have been poor grammar and so I just had to change it, because where would we be without spell check???) Anyhoo, back to the story, where were we? Oh yeah, just like the approach path for Boulder bridge that has been made an extra 200 metres longer just to make a nice walk for people who have nothing better to do than go for a nice walk on a Sunday to look at those crazy rock-climber people. And do you know what really gives me the sh…….. oh, right, climbing last night, sorry, started to rant a bit.
Adam (that’s me J) offered to lead something nice and easy for a warm up, such as one of the 13’s opposite Gorilla My Dreams, but was silly enough to say “what do you think we should climb?” of course the answer was not “let’s climb The Inverted Rasp (13)” (good pro all the way) or “how about A Question of Balance (13)? That’s a nicely protected route Adam.” Oh no, the answer was “I think we should do Street Legal (16).” Note the use of the word “we” here. Now, I would like to take a moment to quote Nick Neagle from the guidebook:
* Street Legal 13m 16
This is more like it. Run out face climbing. Start below and L of Balance’s little roof and climb directly up the wall. No pro beyond half height.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Stewy set up a self belay and climbed The Buttress (13) while Quang seconded Street Legal. Stewy is really getting into this self belaying caper. Two weeks ago he self belayed on Tilt (19). It seems as though he is getting used to doing a lot of things by himself now that Trish is living interstate.
While Dr Nick was getting it up by himself on The Buttress and Quang was saying how he wouldn’t have wanted to lead Street Legal, Jess and Andrew were setting up a top rope for A Question of Balance. Andrew decided that it would be funny to try to give Jess a wedgie, prompting the statement: “Don’t try to wedgie me, just ‘cos I’m wearing my granny undies!” I don’t know how you can expect to climb with all those frills, and all that lace Jess.
Tom managed to talk Megan into climbing The Buttress, and, well, there’s really no other way to say this, but Megan got blown! More on that later.
Adam managed to convince Tom to try leading Gorilla My Dreams (21), and he almost got to the top too! Unfortunately Tom also got blown early and found that he just couldn’t complete the root to the satisfaction of all involved (sorry that should have been route, spell check didn’t help me out there). Still, it was not a bad effort from Tom, the last 1.5 metres is pretty pumpy, and it was his first lead at that grade. (his first above 17)
Jess climbed The Buttress, and played with her breasts at the top of A Question of Balance for the photographer (me JJ!) , and Andrew got blown early, and found himself unable to get up anything for the rest of the night (as far as I know).
Stewy and Adam top roped Gorilla My Dreams Direct Start LHV (19), which we refer to as Gorilla My Arse (and lets face it, it sounds better), yes, I am a bit of a soft c*ck for not leading it but Stewy was at the top, ready to belay, so I just kinda went with the flow. I’ll be out lighting bushfires this weekend to make up for it.
Finally, I led Gorilla My Dreams DS in the dark. Admittedly, I did spread my legs to bridge at the start because I did not want to get blown early, and there was a lot of grunting at the end as I tried to gain the motivation needed for the final thrust, but I eventually came out on top!
Tom managed to convince us not to go to Hawker’s Corner for dinner afterwards by bribing us with beer at his house, so instead we went to The Red Rock Noodle Bar for take-away and followed Tom and Megan back to Tom’s house for beer.
Now, I don’t know how to approach this topic in a sensitive way, but it needs to be reported, so apologies if I am a little ham-fisted, or have gotten it all wrong. First, allow me to draw your attention to the comment below Tom’s picture in the Gallery. After reading this (which apparently she did AFTER giving the web address to her mother), Megan wanted to know from Tom how exactly I knew this, and there was some back and forth conversation about the subject which pretty much ended with Tom thanking me for getting him into a situation that he could not get out of easily. It seems however that all may be forgiven. On the way back to Tom’s house Quang and I were driving behind a car which we did not immediately recognise as being the one that Tom and Megan were in. You see, we knew that they were both in the same car, and normally when two people are in a car you can see two heads, but there was only one head visible in the car in front of us, and then we realised that it was Tom driving!
“Where’s Megan?” I asked Quang.
“Maybe Tom dropped her off somewhere.” He replied.
“But then how come he’s still in front of us? He wouldn’t have had time.” I said.
“Well she’s not in the car…” Quang countered, “….Or is she?”
Adam: “No, she wouldn’t be…..”
Quang: “Surely not.”
“I guess we’ll soon find out. If they both get out of the car when we get to Tom’s house.” Adam reasoned.
“So why were you guys laughing so much?” Megan and Tom asked as they got out of the car at Tom’s house.
“Ohhh, nothing really.” We answered, looking knowingly at each other.
Next week, Arapiles! YAY!!!!!!!!! Where Stewy will have a list of climbs that he wants to scare the shit out of us on. The good news is that this time we have more than six quickdraws each, and a reasonable amount of cams. No running it out due to a lack of gear this time!
12 February 2004
Last night we headed out to The Billiard Table for a little climb.
I (Adam) managed to stuff things up a little by telling everyone that we should meet at Boulder Bridge meaning The Billiard Table. Ooops! Sorry guys! Look on the bright side, at least no-one got hurt on their way to Boulder Bridge right?
Quang decided to open the climbing for the night with a lead of Romper Room (16), an overhanging route with a couple of small roofs and an arête. After getting to the halfway point and the second roof, Quang decided that it was a little too serious and that he was too pumped from trying to find gear placements so he decided that it would be much better for his safety if he down-climbed and sent up the Gimp L.
At around this time, Stewy turned up (having bush-bashed across from Boulder Bridge) with a really impressive looking amount of blood flowing freely from his left elbow. “Yes, send up the Gimp,” he agreed.
So, up went the Gimp. Knowing the nasty nature of his climbing ‘friends’ the Gimp decided not to use the piece that Quang had left behind, nor the crack Quang had used to place a cam, preferring instead to use a no. 3 stopper as his first piece of gear. Why would the Gimp do such a thing you ask? Because avid reader, the mongrels would have denied him the ability to say that he had onsighted it. Now I know that the purists out there will say that if he had seen Quang climb any section of the rock that it then does not count as an onsight, but you see, Quang made such a dog’s breakfast of the thing that watching his feeble attempt did not provide any beta of the route (ooooooh bitchy!). Needless to say, the Gimp climbed the route clean, and it was a shame that no-one was video-taping the ascent because the moves through the amazingly exposed second roof were undoubtedly some of the most inspiring feats of climbing ever seen.
Oh yeah, then Stu and Quang led it with the gear placed by Adam.
Now, on the subject of Stu climbing………
I think we may need to give him a new name: The Cheshire Cat! Have you ever noticed that some people just don’t seem to understand simple requests? My beef this week, and for some time now has been the complete and utter inability for Stewy to not look directly at the camera and grin like an idiot when he realises that someone is about to take a photo! Even when he’s on a ridiculously hard move or exposed section of rock, if you ask for him to look up at the rock to improve the shot a fraction, he will immediately look directly at you, pose and grin insanely! It doesn’t matter if you say “don’t look this way”, or “look at the rock,” his brain translates this to mean “please look at me and show me all of your teeth!” I am convinced that if he fell from a tall cliff and there was a camera pointed at him every shot would show him looking directly into the lens and grinning, even as he hit the ground!
I’ll say it one last time: Stu, don’t look at the F!*#ing camera!!!!!!
Tom sent Jess up Tilt (19) telling her it was The Billiard Table (18), but he was lucky that she was top-roping it, so it’s doubtful that accusations of Sandbagging could be upheld (sorry Mark). Jess then made a successful clean ascent of Romper Room seconding Adam who liked the route so much he decided to lead it again (this time with pre-placed gear from the other ascents). Well done Jess, a good night out!
Tom onsighted Dropout (16), with Quang seconding the route for him, and then decided to give Fascination (21) a go on top rope. If he hadn’t decided to dyno for a hold at about 2/3 height, it would have been a clean ascent. Wanting to give Fascination a go as well, Stu pushed in ahead of the Gimp and spent several hours weighting the rope onto Quang’s joy-department (just like Quang had for Tom on Dropout). By the time Adam got to climb the route it was dark, but he made it to the top clean (just).
It’s funny how someone can show such an amazing desire to stare and smile inanely at a camera when someone is holding it, but as soon as there is no chance of someone taking a picture how uninteresting that same camera can become, to the point where its presence can become completely ignored! Stewy packed up the gear at the bottom of the cliff and brought it all to the top for us. Thanks Stewy…. Five minutes later, Adam climbed back down to the bottom of the cliff to retrieve his camera that had been sitting with all of the other gear.
For the second week in a row we were graced with the presence of a missing-in-action comrade. Andy, the Lay-back King who has been unable to climb this summer because he has a much greater sense of responsibility than the rest of us, met us for dinner at Hawkers. A few rather nasty sms messages before we got there suggesting that they had run out of beer (it’s happened before) nearly earned him a slap across the back of the head, but all was forgiven once we each had our hot little hands clasped around a Coopers Pale Ale J mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm beer!
Next week: The Buttress, where I will try to talk Tom into leading Gorilla My Dreams (21), and think about giving Stewy and Tom’s contrived route Gorilla My Arse (20/21) a lead.
5 February 2004
Climbing this week was at Far Crag, and what a runaway success it was!!
Stu and Tom Climbed Resurrection (17) and that’s about it. Adam climbed Shewoodenduit (18) and Pedagogue (12), Mark, Andrew and Jess climbed Sheoak Corner(12), and Jess also climbed Pedagogue (12). Whoop de Doo!! We really were on the cutting edge of rockclimbing this week weren’t we?
About the only point of interest revolved around Stu placing a horizontal cam that he stated he did not like nor feel very comfortable about having to weight. Nothing too strange about this, we all have moments where we are forced to accept less-than-ideal placements, however the totally confounding thing is that after stating his complete lack of faith in the piece being able to even hold its own weight in the crack he went and rested on it!! I just don’t know what can be said about the thought process there. Tom later confirmed the shit nature of the placement by pulling it straight out when cleaning the route on abseil after having led it with Stu’s pre-placed gear. Tom stated that having heard Stewy’s doubts about the safety of the piece he just clipped it and kept climbing without looking at it (what you don’t know won’t hurt you huh?). Makes more sense than weighting it just to see if you will die or not.
Good to see Boz at Hawkers Corner for a Kuay Teow afterwards. Still mostly ‘armless after his shoulder reconstruction we hope it’s not too long before we see Mr Flexibility out on the rock again.