The Buff

After a couple of busy months I finally had some time over the holidays for an escape up to Mt. Buffalo and to get some climbing done with Geoff Gledhill, whom I met briefly in the Arapiles parking lot when hanging out with Fred. One of the legitimate olde dads of Australian rock climbing, Geoff has been scouring The Buff for new routes since the mid 60's and qualifies as the best climbing partner I've yet to churn up in Oz. Two years into retirement and as keen of a rock climber as you're ever likely to meet, Geoff spends much of his time winching terrified noobs up routes he put up 40 years ago - which, while having it's merits, can still get a bit tiring. Our kindred tastes for granite cracks, simul-climbing and relaxing fun complement perfectly and Geoff was grinning like a bird-fed cat to be sailing up routes with Yosemite-style tactics in an hour or two that would otherwise have taken most of a day and a fair amount of drama.

Two of our outings turned out to be noteworthy and the first occurred after doing a couple of routes on The Castle one fine afternoon. Geoff mentioned that he had once ventured, with the late Chris Baxter, across the meadow to Corral Peak where they had spied a couple of cracks appearing well worth climbing but that they had never gotten around to revisiting. How right he was! What we found scattered around the peak were three or four splitter hand cracks ranging from probably 6-10 meters in height that, by his reckoning, remained unclimbed. Wide-eyed with disbelief, I had fortunately brought along my shoes and chalk bag and eagerly plunked down in the grass, shod myself, and started up like a rabid chimp. All good climbs, if still a bit gritty, I can definitely recommend them either to soloists or folks looking for good training cracks and/or convenient top-roping in a nice location just twenty minutes from the road.

Our second notable outing occurred after I convinced Geoff to come examine a new route I had spied months ago near The Hump and had already done a bit of the prep work on. The day prior, we had been discussing the tendency of first ascentionists to be convinced that their routes are the best climbs in any given area so I was trying to lay off the enthusiasm a bit but, after rapping down for a preview, Geoff had to agree that it is an amazing feature that "is going to be quite an adventure". The next day we borrowed the requisite tools and installed a two-bolt anchor and one protection bolt high on the route where the crack runs out into a blank scoop. I cleaned up some of the holds, installed a fixed wire at the start and thus the route, The Pimp Hand (left hand held as if to backhand somebody, then view photo), was ready for a free attempt that was going to have to wait as this week had come to an end.

A bit obsessed and dreaming about the moves at night, I got Susy to come belay me the following week so I could try to work out the moves on a top rope. I knew it was going to be hard, I was speculating maybe 5.12+ and that if I trained a bit I would be able to send, but there's no way around what happened - I got brutally slapped down not even able to pull onto to rock for the first 30 feet. Susy laughed and laughed, "I thought you were a good rock climber, but wow, you really suck!" Thanks, darling. Yes, it was indeed a comical failure, but it was also rather depressing after being so amped up to climb something hard again and to, well, not even come close.

Therefore, the Pimp Hand is now an open project awaiting somebody a lot stronger than me, probably one of them Cossey brothers or some visiting international fingercrack aficionado, but aid climbers would still have a lot of fun here. I think it's probably in the neighborhood of 5.13+ (Aussie 30ish), but maybe I'm just super lite. In the first image above (taken from the top of the second-to-last ski lift at Tatra) I'm already swinging back into the crack which gives some indication of the steeeeep angle. The second shot shows the first lock, at the bottom of the photo, which now has a fixed wire in it as you enter by leaning off a crimp undercling on the right-side arete. So there it is folks, get up there and have yourselves some fun!

Catching Up

Absorbed by projects, activities or the sweet sounds of silence I have a tendency to drop completely off the radar screen for extended periods of time. Sometimes there's nothing much to say but only things to do. It doesn't mean I care any less about people and all the wonderful personalities we know, I simply experience difficulty coming up with things to say in a coherent fashion- especially over the internets. That, and my grammar isn't the best and I don't take much time to edit before getting distracted and moving onto something else. Although not ultra-keen on public exposure I still try to maintain this blog for several reasons: one, I read a lot of blogs and find them to be a great and unique source of information and experience; two, it's a good way to keep folks alert of our movements en masse; and three, moving into the van is probably the first thing Susy and I have ever done that everybody else seems to think is an awesome idea and claims to wish they could do themselves. With Australian real estate hovering at historically outlandish levels (median house = 8 x median income, up from 3 in the 1960's) we can only encourage more people to do the same and ditch the stationary box!

After Fred cleared out of town Susy and I leapt right back into work mode and preparing for the upcoming shift out of our apartment and into the mobile lifestyle. In November, Susy's mum went into the hospital with a minor stomach complaint and was subsequently moved down to Melbourne for an extensive series of tests. We couldn't leave her dad, Luciano, home alone in Shepparton so he came down to stay with us in the City where he could hang out with Ede daily and we could manage him while still getting work done. As it turns out, all he really needs everyday is a book of Italian crossword puzzles, 100 grams of food and a glass of wine. Unfortunately, after ten days or so Ede's doctors determined that she necessitated open heart surgery which, ultimately, was a quad-bypass. While these things are considered "routine" these days it's still quite an affair for everybody involved. I was moving a thousand miles an hour trying to work, rebuild the van, manage Luciano, move out of the apartment, as well as doing a massive amount of work preparing a friend's large block of land for his upcoming wedding. Susy, between her jobs, was almost always at the hospital entertaining her mum.

So it was a hectic couple of months but now we are again sailing in relatively calm waters and getting out a lot more. Fully mobile, we have the whole outdoors to call our home and it has sure been liberating. With mobile internet connectivity I'm making full use of it by blogging directly from the Gorge parking lot on Mt. Buffalo right before I chuck a rope over the cliff and resume monkeying around the rocks and basking in some solitude. I'm going to post van mods and some recent climbing stuff separately, maybe today after I get a couple of pitches in. Then again, maybe not.

"Mount" Arapiles

Susy and Tom finally caught up with us in the Grampians on Monday afternoon. Since Fred and I had already done a few pitches of climbing that day, he chilled out with my copy of "In Dubious Battle" in the van while the rest of us went and monkeyed around a bit in the evening. Afterwards, we headed off toward Arapiles and ended up crashing out in a farmer's driveway on the other side of the mountain which, when he stopped by in the morning, gave me a chance to learn something about farming canola and get the no-nonsense story on the potential plague of locusts we're facing this year ("media hype").

Since Tom only had one full day to climb we set our sights on a fairly big outing: an ascent of Arapiles most popular climb, The Bard, a classic 5.7 that ascends the steep buttress on the right side of the photo. Fred was feeling moderately apprehensive at the base, as it is a steep climb with a few notorious traverses, but he sees nothing but the summit once he gets his hands on rock. I ended up getting off route and skipping one of the traverses although the climbing we did was still a bit "tricky". The weather couldn't have been any better for climbing and we ended up doing the whole route in just two or three hours. With some communication difficulties Tom and Susy took a bit longer to finish while Fred and I sat on a ledge marveling at the flatness of the horizon.

Fred on the first pitch.

Unfortunately, Fred got a couple of small skin tears his bicep from the rope and wanted to have a doctor in town dress them properly to avoid an infection. We made a trip to the Horsham hospital and were then sent over to the medical clinic where treatment is 1/4 the price, although they ended up treating him for free. To make matters worse, both Fred and Susy seemed to have picked up some kind of bug at the clinic and were both feeling lousy the next day. Still, Fred insisted on climbing anyway so we headed off to the Organ Pipes, just a couple of hundred meters from camp. I put a top rope on Piccolo, a fun 11 (5.4/5.5), and Fred climbed about 3/4 of it before lowering off. Before he even made it back to the ground, he sat down on a small ledge and fell asleep drooling on the rock for at least 90 minutes while Susy ran some laps on the route and discovered that she likes climbing again.

That night a big storm blew in and soaked Fred pretty good in our crappy tent. We headed into town with the rest of the climbers fleeing camp and after sitting around all day made the decision to head back to Melbourne to dry out and resupply. Fred and I headed back out on Monday and climbed a bit on Tuesday. Even though he was still experiencing stomach cramps, Fred just had to drag himself up something that was fifth class before he could call it a day. The man is truly obsessed by climbing; I'm not.

On another note, Fred's been talking about stealing a sheep and killing it since he got off the plane and commonly picks out which ones we should take. I asked him if he was going to skin it and hang it in the campground and he said, "You know, I should. And that'd be a great rumor too. Can't you do that on the internet or something."

A Bit of Monkeying Around

Three days in the City was more than enough for Fred to be all rested up and itching to get his hands on some rock. Unfortunately, Susy was called on at the last minute to work Saturday night and I was then left to manage the Fred show solo for a couple of days. Both anxious to get out of the City, and with some of his vagueness rubbing off on me, I just chucked a bunch of stuff in the van and we hit the road. We drove most of the way to the Grampians before pulling off the highway to bivy on a small dirt road amidst the canola fields. Having done so at least a few times before, Fred rolled out the door into the grass and was asleep before I could make my bed in the back of the van.

The next morning we spun over to Summerday Valley, on the northern edge of the Grampians, and did a couple of pitches of climbing. Fred hasn't done any rock climbing since he fell off a horse a few months back and was a bit nervous about how he was going to feel but was looking plenty solid on the steep 5.6 that we did and totally stoked to be back out moving around in the vertical.

"Australia!"

"Some of these guys are doing all this 5.12, Moonlight Buttress stuff and I just can't keep up with them. And you know, I don't want to either."

Susy came out on Monday morning with our friend Tom, a motorcycle racing engineer in country for the Grand Prix. Before they showed up, Fred and I got three more pitches in; one of which he led, feeling a bit more confident.

Next up: some monkeying at "Mt." Arapiles to find out what Fred likes better and what he wants to do some more of. We'd like to head up to Moonarie in South Australia but it could be getting a bit hot up that way so might just hang out here for awhile and then over to Mt. Buffalo for a granite fix.

Fred's in the House

After almost two hours of searching we were getting a bit worried. He was already a bit concerned about the flights; Seattle to Melbourne is a rough trip even before you miss a couple of connections. I went to do another run through the baggage claim while Susy checked another gate and had him paged again. Walking down the escalator, I caught a brief glimpse through the columns of our missing climbing partner-in a clearing next to a busy carousel crawling around on his hands and knees. I walked toward him and could see that the contents of his pack were exploded across the floor and he was uncrumpling little pieces of paper looking for my phone number. I walked up to him, bent over and yelled "FRED!" couple of times with no response. I grabbed his arm and opposite shoulder. The look on his face when he saw me was absolutely priceless; purely amped and ready for "anything". Everybody should hope to be just like that when they're 87.

The First Outing

Nearly one year in an apartment had brought us to two conclusions: stationary living is highly overrated; Melbourne housing is at unaffordable levels by any metric. The question remaining was what to do when our lease is up in December? Having spent the three years since I moved here trying to answer that we do have some idea about what our specific needs are. We've had a temporary van, lots of temporary housing, and temporary jobs but it was time for us to finally commit to a lifestyle and, for us, that lifestyle is mobile. Winter was getting oppressive and we were both about to snap. Then, a series of unfortunate events occurring over a short time frame were the catalysts to kick our van shopping back into high gear.

Our criteria basically came down to: a square shape, automatic transmission, legendary reliability, and 4x4 if we could get it. Australia is chocked full of places to get bogged in mud and sand and being limited by these factors is a bummer. On the other hand, the only 4x4 van readily available is pretty much the Mitsubishi Delica-too small for living and a terrible shape for building. Also, we already have a Toyota Townace that's a nice commuter rig. There were a few Volkswagen and MB Vitos in 4x4, but all manual trannys or in poor shape. Then we came across this one:

2000 MB Spinter 312D, 4x4, automatic transmission, 4 seats, 180,000 kms, rear security cage. Originally imported to Australia by an outback ambulance company, it was then a 13-seat tour bus in Queensland before being acquired by a family who was going to drive from Asia to Europe and had fitted it out accordingly:

But after four months driving around SE Asia the eldest of their two daughters was over it and wanted a "normal life" again. A year spent mostly sitting mostly idle in the city convinced them it was time for them to sell it and move on. The ability to walk around the inside standing up sealed the deal for Susy. Having found a great match with impeccable timing for everyone we've got our new home!

Lots of work to do tuning details in the way we want them but that's going to be a long-term project. Focusing now on sound dampening the door resonance, a layer of closed cell foam inside to block high frequencies, and then a thermal barrier or two. Need to finish hinging the security cage over the hatch on the back as well.

Did a quick trip to the Grampians last weekend with Phoebe and Dave, two of Susy's Krav Maga partners. We picked up the gear I've had stashed at the Fortress for several months and set up a top rope on the first 20 meters of Raving Loonies, a grade 24 (5.11d) steeeep thin hands and finger crack. The kids both kicked out noble efforts on their first rock climb and got much farther than I expected!

Our first big trip is coming up in October when.....[drum roll]....., Fred Beckey comes to Oz for 2.5 weeks! Woohoo, rockin' with Fred! He not only going to be first to sail in the new van with us, but he's also the first person we know to come to Oz specifically to hang out with us (we've seen a few others but they were already coming anyway and we met up). What a legend!

The Adventure Begins

Coming December 15th to a blog near you...