The Sunday Paddles: Up Wind, Down Wind

A strong wind warning for Sunday with a 1.8 metre southerly swell meant that conditions on the Sunday paddle would be interesting - just what I like.

I expected a maximum of three people - Nick, Doug and myself - to show up but, in the end, we were a group of five as both Mike and Adrian came along. Adrian is fairly new to paddling on the open ocean but a game bloke who regularly goes out and trashes himself in a tiny surf boat he bought from Wildey and it is good to have him along as a semi-regular on the Sunday paddles.

The plan was pretty simple, launch from our local beach - selfishly I wanted to avoid driving on Sunday - and paddle south into the wind. I was secretly hoping to get as far south as Guerilla Bay, but knew I would be satisfied with getting to Jimmies Island area. Either way I should meet my self imposed constraint to paddle at least 20 kilometres every time I go out.

The low swell and calm conditions at our local bay belied the conditions we would have as we got further south. In southerly conditions I find the headlands north of Mosquito Bay mark the point at which sea and swell begins to build.

We started out with light headwinds but these gradually increased as we headed south to around 10 to 12 knots and the swell and sea picked up quickly until conditions were pleasantly interesting. Paddling near Mosquito Bay we were surprised to see the local kayak guiding company bringing in a convoy of three double kayaks. The boats were surfing along on waves up to two metres high; certainly interesting conditions for rank novices.

Conditions were challenging enough that I thought it wise to have a regroup and rest in Garden Bay, so we pulled into the shelter of the southerly headland for a few minutes. Next was Pretty Point Headland where we pulled in again to regroup before continuing on to Jimmies Island.

We had no hope of paddling through the gap at Jimmies Island, the swell too big and the tide too low so we landed at a lovely little sheltered beach at the south end of Rosedale.

Decision point. I would have liked to get just that little bit further, another 3.5 kilometres down to Burrewarra Point which would be rough in these conditions. Mike offered to wait on the beach while the rest of us nipped down and back, but, the wind and seas were building and in dynamic conditions I am loathe to split the group up; a procedure that so frequently signals the beginning of a clusterfuck.

It was cool on the beach in the wind and, if Mike got cold or weary of waiting, I suspected he might head back on his own, and, while I knew he felt confident in the conditions, every sea kayakers is merely between swims, a facet of our sport that needs to be considered at all times, but particularly when the conditions are challenging and cold. I try to make it a rule when out with a group to never do anything that is inexplicable to search and rescue personnel. In a tightly knit and highly competent group of two or three, risk taking is reasonable, but, when more people are involved, some of whom may not be appropriately assessing risk, I try to keep my decisions just that bit more conservative.

After some discussion, we opted to paddle out past Jimmies Island to where we could set a downwind course and see how many runners we could catch on our way back to our launch bay. Thanks to some coaching from Nick, I have finally got the hang of catching runners. It is easy with a sail, but without a sail it requires a degree of timing and some sprint paddling to get up onto the wave. This was the first time I have reliably caught runner after runner - until I got puffed out at least - without a sail, so my skill set has improved. In fact, I was quite impressed with how fast I was speeding along compared to Adrian and Mike. Not as fast as Nick, I don't think that day will ever come, but significantly faster than I would have done in the past.

Once conditions tamed a bit, north of Mosquito Bay, Mike put up his sail and that helped him speed a long as well. Lots of fun but I was wet with sweat when we pulled into our launch beach as I had an extra warm paddling top on, a beanie and a cagoule. One of my most fun Sunday paddles yet.

Simplified Training

Yesterday I jogged/walked into Monga National Park from Currowan State Forest to the east. I would like to say "ran" but that would not be true. It was a hilly route, up ridge, down to creek, up ridge, down to creek, repeat. Over the 19.2 km, the elevation gain was 880 metres. Not stunning, but not bad either, particularly as I did not set out with the objective of doing a lot of elevation gain. In this, comparatively flat land, training elevation gain requires more serious planning. When I was training to go to Canada in 2019, I had a couple of locations which enabled me to carry a loaded pack up about 800 metres without having to also travel a long horizontal distance. That is really what you want for training power endurance - a long steep hill.

I was thinking about my friend who, on advice from a yoga/pilates (I can't remember which) instructor was working up to running five kilometres using a run/walk program and, also, working on cadence. There is clearly an issue with this advice, besides it being entirely generic. Most glaringly, there really is no benefit, and certain detriment from working on cadence if the issues preventing you from running five kilometres are: (a) lack of strength, or (b) aerobic deficiency syndrome. Anyone who is over 30 - and truthfully, increasingly, many people under 30 - who has not been strength training with weights and appropriately training aerobic capacity on a regular basis (that is, training within their own Aerobic Threshold), unless they are incredibly athletically gifted, likely has both issues occurring concurrently.

Training, for the older adult, who basically wants to be a functional human (a non-simple concept in todays fucked up world), actually requires a relatively simple training program. Strength train movements, not muscles (see DanJohn or Mark Rippetoe), that is, focus on the foundational human movements - a squat, a push, a pull and a hinge. Perhaps throw in a loaded carry.

Train your aerobic system by the tired, but tried and true, long, slow distance formula, preferably on your feet (bicycling does not build bone density and is essentially seated exercise). People who have never trained aerobically or not for a very long time need to correct their aerobic deficiency syndrome before adding any intensity, and certainly before working on cadence. Polarised training can come later, but is not really necessary if your goal is not to race, simply to function well in everyday life. Finally, mobilise. Yoga is a great movement practice, but targeting your own issues (see Smashwerx, Ian Markow  or KellyStarrett) is actually a better use of time.

But back to Monga National Park, it took me almost four hours to cover 19.2 km, because, I am training within my aerobic threshold¹ which means I have to walk many hills. It also means, however, that I got home by 11 am, and spent the rest of the day doing active chores around the house, and, next day, I feel great and ready to train again.

1I use my VT1 (nose breathing pace) instead of a heart rate zone for convenience. For my purposes, this works just as well as carefully testing and establishing my exact HR zones and simplifies training. Simple is good.

Another Budawang Adventure: Mount Owen and Shrouded Gods

"I think we are on the Castle track" I say to Doug as we clamber up boulders and tree roots on the eroded "trail" to Castle Pass. It is eight years since I last walked into Monolith Valley, but only four since we climbed The Castle on a sunny day in summer, and, somehow, I have come to think that we have inadvertently missed the spot where the track forks with the southern most leading to Meakins Pass and the route up The Castle, while the north fork climbs steadily to Castle Pass.

View out of a cave on the Castle gap track

We check our topographic maps on our device, and, of course, we are not on the path marked. Momentarily, we forget how inaccurate these maps are, and how imprecise is my memory, and I drop back down 50 metres looking for the "track." There is no other track, and, I climb back up again to Doug. We have been walking, or more appropriately, engaged in full body gymnastics on what passes for the trail, for 2.5 hours and Doug wants a break. I, of course, have come equipped with over-ambitious plans and hopes of climbing Mounts Nibelung, Owen, Cole, and Shrouded Gods in the three days we have available and am anxious to get into Monolith Valley.

Valley view from the Castle Gap track

Looking at the topographic map, this should all be relatively simple; elevation gain into Monolith Valley is only 700 metres - and, although I am way on the wrong side of 50, I can still walk uphill at a respectable 350 metres an hour with an overnight pack - and each peak rises only 100 metres from Monolith Valley. The distance separating them also is not great, a few kilometres at most. But all that, seen readily on the topographic map belies travel in the Budawangs where the bush is thick, and the terrain convulsed with cliffs and buttresses not shown on any map.

Quintessential Budawang monoliths

It takes us almost 3.5 hours to reach Castle Pass, which seems way too long for the distance and elevation gain by anyone's standards, but then again, walking into the Budawangs by this route has always involved hip-high step-ups, clambering over tree roots suspended a metre off the trail due to erosion, sidling between tight boulders, and crawling through caves. We have lunch at Castle Pass and then turn our attention towards the next pass, Nibelung Pass.

Arch near the Green Room

The track turns to the west and heads into an other worldly valley of sandstone pagodas, columns and turrets, patches of deep green rainforest vegetation in dark clefts with verdant palms and ferns, sandstone arches, dripping waterfalls between mossy walls, and, before the fires, dense, wiry, virtually impenetrable vegetation - twisted banksias and spiny hakea. Since the fires of 2019/2020 the scrub is much reduced, visibility improved, but the track through Monolith Valley is as hard, or perhaps harder to follow than ever as large trees have obscured the foot bed in places, and months when the park was closed reduced traffic.

On the Monolith Valley track

At the chains, we meet another party who have walked through from Wog Wog, and wait while they lower packs down before we scamper up. I had hoped to scramble up Mount Nibelung before climbing to the top of Shrouded Gods, but, the only information I had for Nibelung was that it was reached by "scrambling up a steeply rising gully." A bit vague given there are many steeply rising gullies on the north side of Mount Nibelung. I am not averse to exploring, but, if we had to go up and down multiple gullies to find the right one, we would run out of time, so, we opted to head up Shrouded Gods instead.

Overlooking Shrouded Gods

Now the route to Shrouded Gods should be quite simple and it would have been had we been on the track, but, we had lost the track almost as soon as we clambered up the chains at Nibelung Pass and had wandered off to the west. Later, we discovered that, if we had been on the Monolith Valley track we would have gone right past a small cairn marking the start of the route to Shrouded Gods. As it was, we bushbashed over to the base of a buttress on the west side of Shrouded Gods and then had to slowly, impeded as we were by thick vegetation bash back to the east. Eventually, after much thrashing, we found a promising looking gully and headed up.

Mount Mooryan from Shrouded Gods

A short distance up, a chimney move was required to surmount a big chockstone and we passed our packs up. A little further and a low angle chimney on the right had a slither of black rope hanging down it and we surmised this chimney would the secret to reaching the top. We had brought a section of 8 mm climbing rope with us and used this to haul the packs so we could chimney up the last steep section unencumbered. Most of the way, it is easy enough to wriggle up with pack on but the last section requires some true chimney moves. As usual in Australia, the rope left as a handline was some kind of junky nylon stuff from K-Mart or the Reject Shop.

Scrambling up the chimney on Shrouded Gods

The rest of the way was easy. We crossed the top of the gully we had initially started up and then found a faint pad along a treed ledge that led up to ironstone plates on sandstone and easy scrambling to top. Once on top we wandered around easily as the scrub had been heavily burnt and sticking to the outside edges we could walk on sandstone slabs. The highpoint on the map is 850 metres (roughly) and at the southern end of the large flat summit plateau which stretches two kilometres to the northeast.

The Castle from Shrouded Gods

The view is stunning. I think one of the best I have seen in the Budawangs. It is possible to see all the way along the east coast from Point Perpendicular to Wasp Island, and around the other compass points are the rugged peaks and plateaus of the remainder of the Budawang Range. This far above the valleys it is easy to forget how arduous and slow travel through the range actually is.

Pigeon House and Byangee Walls

After finding a good campsite, we looked around for water. We had been hoping to find water in the small creeks that drain the summit plateau as there had been a reasonable amount of rain recently, but, they were reduced to dampness and we had to rely on puddles for drinking water. Sounds rough, but since moving to Australia my tolerance for suspect water sources has increased mightily.

Looking toward Nibelung Pass

By the time we brewed tea and had attempted to wash some of the dirt of the day away - we were both black with ash and soot - it was getting dark and time for a few last photos before the sunset.

Enjoying the last views as the sun sets

It was a windy enough night that we decided to sleep in the valley somewhere the next night. I woke up at 5.30 am, just as the sun was rising, and enjoyed a brilliant but brief sunrise moment. Given the wind and our water sources, we decided to walk back down to the valley for breakfast. And thus began the 3/4 hour long search for the route off.

Sunrise

The afternoon before, our route to camp had seemed so simple that we had not made any cairns to mark the route or even paid much attention to landmarks. We both thought we knew the "way to get off" and we were both kind of wrong. The wind, which had reached blow us off the mountain point, really did not help as whenever we were near an edge, we were buffeted around severely.

Back to Monolith Valley

Finally, we found a couple of cairns and a familiar looking tree, and, with no further trouble descended to the valley, where we found water, a sheltered flat slab of sandstone and settled down to breakfast.

Leaving Monolith Valley, we found a sheltered campsite near sandstone bluffs with water nearby and set up camp for the night. Then, we walked back to the north side of Mount Cole and cast around for, what the guidebook describes as "a trail to the summit." There is, of course, no trail, just rock ribs and gullies. Many gullies looked devilishly thick, but we chose one that did not look too bad and scrambled up some rock pagodas until we found ourselves on easy terrain strolling up ledges interspersed with short sandstone stacks that were easy to climb.

Walking up Mount Cole

There was a cold front with fog and precipitation rolling in so we littered our route with small cairns in order to find our way back in poor visibility. The summit, which is flat and covered with dense burnt scrub was easily reached and then we strolled along sandstone slabs with glorious views until we were above Trawalla Falls. I was sorely tempted to walk south to the summit of Mount Cole, but, rain was falling in the distance and we have twice toyed with hypothermia in the Budawangs and had no need to repeat the experience.

Cold front rolls in over Mount Owen

Back at camp, we had tea, watched the fog and rain roll in, and crawled into the tent early to the sound of light rain.

Cold front over Mount Owen

Our last day was socked in and drizzly. We decided to forgo any attempts to climb other peaks, there would be no views today, and, with lots of fits and starts, finding and losing the track again, we walked back out.

Sunset on Shrouded Gods

The Sunday Paddles: An Authentic Experience

Warning, trigger alert, I am about to use the word "authentic." Actually, both trigger and authentic send me spare. Both words are used as code to say "I have not had an original thought since I was potty trained, but I will throw in two abused, over-used and mis-used words to pretend I have something erudite to say."

So, with that out of the way, here is an "authentic" picture from this morning's solo sea kayak trip. For the first Sunday in months and months, I had nobody sign up for the regular Sunday sea kayak trip that I organize. Even Nick, who always comes, was somewhere else, and Doug stayed home in bed!

But, I made a pact with myself, if no-one else, that I would be out on the water every Sunday - rain, wind, gale warnings, dangerous surf conditions, nothing would stop me. Knowing I would be solo, I decided on an early morning paddle; sunrise is my favourite time to be on the water. I got up about 4.45 am, and trolleyed (dictionary: verb, the act of wheeling a kayak on a home made trolley constructed from scrap timber and golf cart wheels picked up during hard waste week) down to my local beach which had a bit of a surf coming in this morning.

I tried to stay dry launching but, no luck, I copped one in the chest heading out. And this is what it looked like. I know the sun came up, because it got light, but apparently, the sun sidled up behind a thick blanket of grey as I noticed no discernible "sunrise."

The important thing is: one, I did what Dan John always talks about - I showed up, and two, I am happy to post this authentic but totally drab photograph, because, despite what the influencers want you to believe, life has drab days too and getting shit done is mostly about showing up.

Do Not Be Offended

It is hard to believe it is a decade since I wrote a post that ostensibly detailed the purpose of my blog, but was really just another rant about something that was on my mind on one particular day. And, by the way, as far as I can remember, the photo is from the Valkyr Range and the skiing was epic.

As good as it looks

In the early days, I put most of my mountain trip reports up on the Bivouac site. They are all still there, all 206 mountain trip reports. They span the early days of scrabbling around chossy peaks and thin snowpacks in the Rubbly Mountains, right through to 2019 when we managed a good number of mountain trips on a five month visit back to the country that will always hold my heart.

Atwell from the summit of Garibaldi

My blog, from the beginning, was mostly a place where I expressed my opinion about things mostly mountain related, but sometimes not. My very first entry, for example, was a story about the New World Order film night that used to run Monday nights in my old home town of Nelson back before Nelson become a trendy place to hang out and was a somewhat scruffy old mining town inhabited mostly by alternative people who were living simply off the grid and smoking copious amounts of dope. In fact, I took my mother to one of the New World Order film nights where the dope was so thick in the air that she spent the whole evening wondering what that strange incense was.

Our old home town

Over the years, my blog changed and became more a chronicle of my adventures, interspersed with the occasional rant about the latest social media horror, but mostly a bland recounting of this paddle or that bushwalk. I was busy, and just keeping up with trip reports took all the time I was willing to spend sitting staring at a screen, and so the rants, which still rattled around my brain got more and more infrequent and the boring "we went here, we did this" posts became more common.

Morning on the south coast

These days, I always have a rant topic festering away like a boil on a butt, but I rarely seem to get around to writing them. The other issue that keeps those rants stoppered up is a fear of offending someone. Perhaps we have entered the age where everyone is offended, or triggered as someone said to me the other day, by everything. And, by the way, stop saying people are "triggered" because they disagree with you.

Discussing options

Of late, I have even begun to carefully scrutinise and edit my trip reports for fear of saying something that will offend someone who was on the trip. Which is, to my mind, a bit of a shame. My writing has always been a way for me to process the world around me and to reflect on lessons learned on my many outdoor adventures. None of us are perfect and the truth is that we all make mistakes, some big, some small, some consequential, some insignificant. For me, a mistake is only truly an error if I did not learn anything from it. My increasingly sanitised trip reports frequently omit errors and incidents which were instructive to me, if not to anyone else.

How did I manage to capsize here?

PC, J.W. 

All of this rankles some. I have always been one of those brutally honest people who will answer "yes" if that dress does make you look fat and the stylist really did a number on your hair. I appreciate the same honesty. And, if you read over some of my posts, it is clear that I am pretty sincere about my own failings, of which there are many.

Failure on Mount Cooper

Years and years ago, almost a lifetime, we did a long ski traverse with a friend of mine (since killed in a climbing accident) who wrote the trip up for the Bivouac site. Some of his comments on us, his companions on this trip, were pretty hard to read at the time as they were, in many instances, rightly scathing about our abilities. Compared to Rick, we were nervous novices, and, given that Rick had a pair of cojones that would make an elephant proud, doing a big, committing traverse with people who dithered over every decision was no doubt frustrating. But, I appreciated his honesty, no matter how difficult it was to read at the time. And maybe that is the point, we need to do hard things and confront things that make us uncomfortable, because, the end of your comfort zone is where the real life begins.

Rick at the start of the Maligne Range traverse

The Sunday Paddles: Just For Fun

Another weekend when the weather was nothing like forecast. Instead of three consecutive days of strong northerlies we had one day, and then two days of light winds. It seems no matter how long I delay when deciding on the location of the Sunday paddle, the forecast will always be stunningly inaccurate.

Given the forecast strong northerlies I, against my better judgement, decided on a downwind run and car shuttle. Well, we did the car shuttle part, but the downwind run was an easy paddle in a low swell and a wind that barely reached five knots.

With an casual day on tap, we extended the trip by paddling past the Tollgate Islands and Black Rock, landed on a very small island using a narrow channel between two rock reefs to access a tiny beach surrounded by cliffs, and explored the little caves and islets on the south side of Burrewarra Point before paddling into the Tomago River through the Mossy Point bar where there was barely a 10 cm riffle.

Last time Doug and I paddled this stretch of coast, we paddled both directions including home into a headwind, racking up a 40 kilometre day. As Mark Twight famously said (about alpinism), "It does not have to be fun to be fun;" sea kayaking does not have to be gruelling to fun, and this day was just kind of fun!

The Sunday Paddles: Around Beecroft Peninsula

Sunday, after the Saturday "wind" paddle, there were only three people left standing for the Beecroft Circuit paddle, so we could set our own time to get away from camp. Accordingly, we arrived at the Dolphin Reserve in Currarong at around 8.30 am. The tide was pretty low but it was still possible to paddle out the channel from Currarong Creek.

As we were paddling past the breakwater, I heard some random guy saying "Well, you could not build this today with the Greens," apparently talking about the small breakwall around the channel and thought that the power that the average Australian punter assigns to the Green Party - who have one, count 'em, one, MP is astounding. In reality, the Australian political scene is a corrupt "Game Of Mates," and there are no Green mates.

But back to the paddle. It was pretty smooth going to Beecroft Head and then we got into the bump zone. A southerly swell, a northerly swell and rebound from both. This is my third time around Beecroft Peninsula and I have yet to have a smooth paddle. A third of the way down the peninsula we came to Corilla Cave and Gum Getters Inlet. This is the one spot on the circuit where you can find some protected water but first you have to paddle through a narrow gap between cliffs.

After recent rains the little creek was running but the water was still clear and we had a stand up rest beside our kayaks. Then past The Drum and Drumsticks and seals resting in the water, and further south exploring some caves as we went. Nick paddled through the Cathedral but it required a dab hand at timing and I did not want to try it as the waves washing through looked big.

South of Crocodile Head, the water was calmer and once we passed Point Perpendicular we had little to no swell. The northerly wind was up and it was time for lunch and a spell out of the kayaks so we cut across the bay and landed at Silica Cove.

While we were having lunch, Rae and Alison paddled past on their way back to camp. We finished with an easy paddle north to camp.

Sugarloaf Hill, Buckenbowra River and Bolaro Mountain

I have always been a peak bagger, and, even now, when the hills around me are lower in elevation than my house was at in Canada, I still seem to be drawn to walking to the top. More often than not there is no view, or not much of a view, and the greatest technical difficulty is often ensuring I have actually got to the top, so nondescript are the summits. But, still I go, something about the journey becoming more important the older I get.

Our yard in winter

In the last week I have been up two of the minor little hills we have in our area. One was with a group of four other friends who I coerced into coming along by advertising the approach paddle as the regular south coast Sunday paddle. Truthfully, I was surprised that anyone would sign up for the Sunday paddle given it was mostly on the river and we usually paddle on the ocean, but, it turned out that none in the group had paddled up the river and were game to do so, at least once.

Heading towards the bridge

I have actually paddled up the Clyde River multiple times on training paddles, in fact, that is where I got the idea to walk up Sugarloaf Hill. We met at our home beach at 9 am and had a fussy departure sorting foot pegs and spray skirts finally getting off the beach closer to 10 am than 9 am. I had timed the outing so we would have the tide with us in both directions. It is usually about an hour to the big bridge over the mouth of the Clyde River, where two of our friends in a double kayak left the group as they wanted a shorter paddle.

View of Buckenbowra Valley

It is another hour to the confluence with the Buckenbowra River and then only a half hour up the Buckenbowra River until we reached a small inlet where I thought we could get out and stash the kayaks in the bush. Apart from slippery mud on the bank this was easily accomplished.

The squad on Sugarloaf Hill

State forests in NSW have a road on every ridge, so we only had to walk a short distance before we got on an old road that took us right to the top of Sugarloaf Hill. There was much friendly banter, at least I took it as friendly, about the view from the top that I had promised. There was a view, a bit filtered through forest, but we could see east to the Clyde and Buckenbowra Rivers and west to Paradise Valley.

View from Sugarloaf Hill

The paddle back was a good training mission into a 18 knot headwind. There is always a headwind on the Clyde River as far as I can tell.

Boulders on route up Bolaro Mountain

A couple of days later, I thought I might as well check off Bolaro Mountain which is almost twice as high as Sugarloaf Hill but still under 700 metres. I have seen the east side of Bolaro Mountain from a number of other vantage points on runs through Currowan State Forest and knew that there were lots of large granite boulders and slabs on the eastern side.

High balls on Bolaro

As usual, a fire trail runs right across the top from the north to the south, but I avoided all but a short approach road and walked up one spur ridge on the east side and down another. It was a pleasant stroll. I had good, if hazy views of the Budawangs on the way up, and was able to scramble up low angle slabs along the way. The top of the mountain has a nice forest of very bright green tree ferns that survived last summer's bushfires. There is also a pretty little creek running with clear water over granite slabs that I explored on the way down.

Distant view of the Budawangs

Arbitrary lists are, by definition, discretionary, some items make the list, others don't. I have had arbitrary lists for as long as I can remember. The first list, was a list of peaks we could see from our condominium in Canmore. This included rocky summits we could just glimpse by climbing on the toilet seat to squint out the bathroom window with binoculars. We spent many long days pursuing these peaks, often on trips that extended past 12 hours long and involved arduous trudges up the giant scree gullies and slopes of the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. On one particularly noteworthy ascent, I remember a friend and I giggling hysterically from fatigue as we stumbled down a dry creek bed at 9 pm at night.

Stumbling down the track after a long day in the mountains

But that is the fun of arbitrary lists, they encourage to get out and do something out of the ordinary in what is otherwise a familiar environment.  Because, as Mark Twight famously said, "if you no longer live in the mountains you have to find meaning in the valley." (not an exact quote).