Running Into The Green

I have a decades long fascination with maps, topographic maps in particular. The spaces of green where there are no towns or buildings, just the words "forest" or "national park" written across them beckon like a set of Matryoshka dolls with secrets contained within secrets. If I explore one part of the map, there is always another segment, over a ridge, across a stream, into another valley where there is more exploring to do.

On run days, I look at the map, choose a location and head off into the green. Generally, I look for single track, although I will run old fire trails if no single track presents itself. But, I almost always find trails, and then I follow the trail, running for hours through the bush. Often the trail is what latter day runners would call "technical" meaning steep, loose, narrow, hard to run at speed, but I would actually call that normal. Life in the green is not a Disneyland side walk. The tracks are overgrown, rutted, draped in spider webs, slippery and wet or stony and dry.

Running around in the green, I have found quiet streams and small waterfalls, old mines, and big boulders, slabs of rock, and forests of tree ferns. I have heard koalas grunting in the trees and scared up big kangaroos and small wallabies. There are lizards and snakes, and once I even saw a sugar glider run downhill and fly off over a steep valley as I ran along a sharp ridgeline.

City dwellers have told me "there is no bush here in my neighbourhood" and I have shown them the corridors of green that link together and create long song lines of bushland that can be travelled by those willing to wander.

My store of maps are now criss-crossed with lines of trails I have run, different colours marking different days. Straight lines and loops, inter-linked figure of eights where I have run parts of one trail and then drifted off onto another new loop. My knowledge of the landscape grows ever more intimate as I recognise hills I have run up before, fire trails I have intersected, streams and waterfalls seen before but from different view points.

Today I ran single track from just south of Mogo down to Pollwombra Mountain closing another small gap in my knowledge of that landscape. I am pretty sure with another day or to of running I will have found a single track route all the way from Mogo to Moruya. It would be fun to push that north and run all the way to Nelligen - the map is intriguingly green all the way.

The Sunday Paddles: Nine, Eight, Seven, Five

Planning the Sunday paddles is always a bit of a challenge, not a huge challenge, like Racing The Planet, but it requires a bit of wrangling as the larger the group the more diverse the motivations and abilities. To my surprise, after weeks of very few attendees, the Sunday group size swelled to nine. I have not had numbers like that since the end of year paddle when I promised home baked goodies (is there a correlation?).

Added to that was a forecast for a very hot day and strong northerly winds. With few exceptions, motivation to paddle into a strong wind is generally missing and my motivation to do car shuttles, especially on hot days, is substantially absent.

What to do then, well, get wet of course. Doug and I would leave from our home beach and meet most of the rest of the crew at Maloneys and then paddle out into the open ocean for some rescue and rolling practice. I offered the few keeners that might be interested the opportunity to tack on ten extra kilometres by starting with Doug and I.

The keeners outnumbered the regular paddles by one this week, and five of us started from our home bay paddled five kilometres in glassily calm conditions (of course, the weather forecast had changed and the strong winds were gone) to meet four more paddlers on the other side of the bay. Within minutes of us arriving, nine had gone down to eight as one paddler was called into work, so eight of us set off around North Head - how many North Head's does Australia have?

Then came some rolling (for some), some rescues for others, some re-entry (or rentry as my friend called them) rolls for yet others and finally, landing on North Head Beach in very easy conditions. One more paddler left to head back home from here, while most other people walked up to North Head lookout. A new platform has been built up at the cliff top since last years fires and the forest, which amazingly escaped the fires is as beautiful as ever. I am always a little bit surprised that people who have been paddling this coast for far longer than me have never ventured up to some very accessible places. Perhaps there is such a thing as the adventure gene.

Next up, we paddled north to Richmond Beach. I have landed on this beach multiple times and there would be no problem landing today but we had one person who really did not want to land. Sometimes, when deciding is difficult, it really helps to have someone in the group with a strong opinion. Other times, I'll admit it can be frustrating. However, with a party of seven, getting everyone in and off a surf beach can really eat up time so I was happy enough to paddle back to Judges Beach and an easy landing for lunch.

Leaving Judges Beach after lunch, we were back to five as two people headed west to Maloneys and the rest of us caught a bit of a tailwind home across the bay.

The Size Of Your Cell

Second only to the words "raw" and "authentic" comes "comfort zone" which should only be used if you are describing your latest mattress from the big box store. Otherwise, anything described as raw, authentic or outside your comfort zone simply paints you as the ultimate poseur.

Despite that, I do think we have a problem with comfort zones in the modern world. We have elevated luxury into a status symbol and live almost 24/7 inside well equipped houses with climate control, and impressive quantities of food (or food like substances) on hand so that we never feel the slightest twinge of hunger, we drive from one curated and groomed location in temperature controlled lavishly comfortable cars, and, on our vacations from this every day life we spoil ourselves by indulging in more of the same except on a grander scale. If this is the way you live, at some point your comfort zone has shrunk to the size of an immeasurably small postage stamp on which you stand marooned.

When almost all of society lives this way, it is truly difficult to recognise that your comfort zone has become a prison. One of my young relatives recently mentioned to me that she and her husband needed a second car because she was "trapped at home" while her husband was at work with the car. They live three minutes walk from the train station in a city with some of the best public transit in the world and last time I looked she had a functioning pair of legs. If you are "trapped" in this circumstance you have most definitely made your own prison.

Dave Macleod writes a lot about comfort zones when coaching rock climbers. His excellent book 9 out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes might almost be read as a short treatise on the importance of doing things that are difficult for you on a regular basis. The more you expand beyond your boundaries, feel discomfort or even fear, the larger becomes the arena in which you can operate without becoming paralysed by apprehension or "trapped" by circumstance. I fear that for many people in the modern world, simply skipping a meal or a snack and feeling true hunger is enough of a move outside their nesting box to start with. But as many people before me have said, start where you are.

But this is primarily an outdoor adventure blog, so what have I done recently that pushed me a little. On Wednesday, with a forecast 4 to 5 metre long period swell we paddled from our home beach around to a couple of our favourite surf spots. The first spot we hit provided some easy long rides to warm up and then we moved to another location where we were catching fantastic long rides from the point all the way into the breakwater. I am always a little anxious surfing as my roll is not bomber and there is something truly panic inducing about being upside down in a kayak as waves knock the boat around, and, there is always the long and looming swim of shame.

Next day, with a cracking northeasterly wind at a steady 20ish knots, our friend Nick suggested a paddle out to North Head and back on an upwind-downwind run. With an underlying two metre long period swell it was an exciting and challenging paddle over to North Head from our home bay. The sea was lumpy and when we finally got to some minimal shelter near the Three Isle Point the swell rolling in was very large and the wave tops were being blown off in long plumes.

Nick was having the time of his life, while I was thinking this was definitely some type 2 fun. I would hate to capsize and blow a roll in these conditions because losing your boat in the wind is not hard to imagine. My paddle stroke on the way over was literally shit, as I kept air paddling when the water disappeared below the boat and I had a super short and highly ineffective stroke going. It reminded me of major thrutch sessions I have had on rock climbs that are too hard for me when I just start flailing and scrabbling, clawing upwards with my finger nails, anything to avoid falling off. But, of course, we made it and the zone in which I can operate without the whites of my eyes rolling back moved outwards just a little.

Onto The Hedonic Treadmill

I once heard someone say the that the problem with chasing money as your life goal was that someone always had more than you. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was paddling a circuit from my home bay. I am training for a sea kayak trip, and essential training is paddling multiple days in a row so that your body gets used to performing even when fatigued.

After a upwind/downwind with Sir Splashalot the day before (28 kilometres), I was heading out for my standard 20 kilometre paddle. Unless I am doing a skills day or paddling with a big group, I have a rule that I paddle at least 20 kilometres every time I go out. Less disciplined or goal oriented people would think this is really weird, but it makes perfect sense to me, and is very similar to the drive to adventure ratio that I uphold. I like having principles in life no matter how weird or arbitrary they seem to other people.

But back to money. My dad always used to say "Money is made round to go round." He was a working class guy, my whole family was working class, but, as Australia has gained wealth, mostly from digging large holes in the ground to extract resources, pumping up a property market to fetish status, and, when both of those things teetered, importing people as fodder for the economic machine, living standards have climbed to what is, compared to when I grew up, almost unimaginable heights.

My brother, for example, a five person family, if you count the new son-in-law, is about to become a six car family. That is more than one car per person. When I grew up, we were a five person family and had one car. Clearly, from an environmental perspective, this is appalling. But this is not a post about the environmental impact of excessive consumerism. It is a post about the ultimate futility of jumping onto the hedonic treadmill from which there really is no escape, merely a running faster and faster in place as the treadmill speeds ahead of you.

I am not against getting ahead in life. I just think we need to put a bit more thought into what we are getting ahead at. Far as I can tell, despite what the old 1980's bumper sticker read, the one with the most toys does not actually win. Some of my millennial relatives are so motivated by money that it actually scares me a little. I am not sure if the money is a vehicle to greater independence to do things they really love (sports? travelling? collecting fine art?) or if the money is simply a vehicle by which to gain status and demonstrate their status by buying more stuff.

My own opinion is that our behaviour is far more hijacked by neurotransmitter release than we are willing to admit. We are far less independent thinkers and much more easily manipulated crash test dummies hurtling head long towards a cement wall. There is simply no other way to explain the trends that we see in larger society: diets composed entirely of processed food, alcohol and drug dependency, retail therapy, cheating even our closest relatives so that we can stick a few more dollars into our own pockets. All of these things ultimately have a bad ending: premature disability or death, a house full of possessions but a life devoid of connection, a few more dollars in your bank account but no-one to spend time with when you are lonely. Would rational and sentient beings actually destroy their future for some short term gain?

We really have to get away from the idea that we are exceptional if we are to recognise that our behaviour may not be aligned with our stated beliefs. Humans, among all the animals upon the earth, are surely the greatest at taking courses of action that are biologically motivated (cue dopamine reward systems) that we rationalise after the fact. Whenever I discuss this with people, however, they say, "yes but not me." If not you, then who?

The Sunday Paddles: Into The Wind

Another Sunday with a strong wind warning. I had been in Sydney and was glad to come back to a good southerly blow both to clear and cool the air - it was hot in Sydney - and because paddling into the wind is such good training. There were only three of us, that is expected on a day of strong winds, so we left the beach right on time at 8.30 am and started plugging south.

Well, Doug and I plugged, Nick sped along like a collie rounding sheep. He had not paddled for a couple of weeks and was feeling well rested and sprightly. I am never really rested because I train year round, week in, week out, every day of the week. Sometimes I think Nick has this idea that when we are not paddling we are laying back in our chaise lounges resting. I simply cannot do rest. I go snaky within a day of not getting out and doing something. So, most days, I have some festering low grade fatigue, which at some point, if all goes according to plan, will result in super-compensation.

At Jimmies Island we paddled through the inside passage, sneaking out between waves, and then slid into Guerilla Bay through a slot between the little islet and the bluffs at the north end of the beach. To avoid people, we landed through a narrow passage between rocks on the little islet. A good training mission so far into a steady 15 knot headwind and a fairly well developed sea. All the way down Nick had been saying "This is going to be fantastic going back if the wind keeps up."

After a quick break, we headed over to the north side of Burrewarra Point and poked along the gauntlets and caves there. I have paddled past this point dozens of times and yet we still found a new feature, a really cool arch through rock that you could actually paddle right through. Past that, we paddled a few more gauntlets and passed some fur seals lying on rocks and resting in the sea. I think the population of seals must be increasing as they seem to be spreading further up and down the coast.

Then out into the heaving seas at Burrewarra Point and finally turning downwind for the run back. Doug and I were struggling a bit to get on the waves. The sea was pretty lumpy and the runners not that clean, plus, it was very easterly conditions so it was a bit beam on most of the time. Still, I think we got back from Burrewarra Point to our home bay - a distance of about 12 kilometres - in 1:15. Speed is not over-rated.

Ego Or Ethics

No-one reads the old classics of mountaineering any more. Now we have slick movies and Youtube videos, but these more visual stories from a world tamed by the increasing spread of human influence are no real match for the stories of pure struggle, some success, much failure and tragedy that accounts like Heinrich Harrier's The White Spider, or Lionel Terray's Conquistadors of the Useless recounted.

As a youth, I borrowed every book on adventure exploration and mountaineering I could get from my public library in suburban Sydney. I read David Roberts' The Mountain Of My Fear, Eric Shipton's Six Mountain Travel Books, all the books the library had about Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton, and somewhere along the way I became obsessed with the idea of finding myself through explorations in the natural world.

Forty years later, while the body is decidedly less able, the mind is still so very willing and I continue to find most of my meaning in life from pursuing outdoor skill sports that require complete immersion in the natural world. Every social media poseur now has multiple media accounts where they claim an undying devotion to outdoor adventure yet in real life, appear paralytically afraid of insects or snakes, surely the most innocuous of the "tribulations" one faces when adventuring in the outdoors.

Talking about some of my (mis)adventures in the mountains recently with my relatives, I recounted a couple of those epics: one of which involved a stuck knee near 3000 metres (ASL) on Bugaboo Spire necessitating a professional helicopter rescue, and the other a long (as in multiple days) ski out from the middle of the Purcell Mountain Range after losing our entire food cache in a semi-frozen alpine lake.

My relatives wanted to know why we were not carrying communication devices - SPOTs, satellite phones, or PLB's. Apart from the fact that none of those things existed at the time, I doubt we would have carried them anyway. There is an ethic to exploring in wild places that is not understood by those who rarely if ever venture far from the groomed ski trail, hiking track, or sheltered coast-line. We explore to experience consequences, real consequences from real decisions and real actions, many of which are, by dint of human frailty, mistaken, and the consequences unfortunate at best, dangerous at other times are ours to confront, to win or lose, but to at least engage on equal ground.

"Ego," my relatives exclaimed when I tried to explain this. "No," I repeated "ethics." "Ego," they cried even more loudly, as I tried to explain the arcane and obscure rules that have spurned literally decades of discussion among climbers, but still motivate our behavior even as the ethics themselves change and flux as society shifts. Ethics are as tough for climbers to explain to non-climbers as kissing the ring of an old celibate man is to an atheist. These are two solitudes that will never meet.

I know ego in the mountains. Once, with a group of female friends, I very nearly led us all to either death or disability on an avalanche slope in very poor conditions. I thought I was good enough to manage the slope. I wasn't; no-one really is. But, I also know ethics. The rules that govern our conduct. I endeavour not to lie, to cheat, to steal, not just in my everyday life, but in my adventure life. I will not claim as an ascent a route I cheated on, I will not pretend I am the old female version of the young Marc Twight, nor will I emboss upon my achievements or claim to be an adventurer when the furthest I have gone off the beaten trail is a step to the side to piss in the woods.

As more and more of us pile into the modern world and as the connections between individuals become ever more attenuated by social media and the inevitable social comparison that our connected lives spawn, I wonder if we have lost our ethics as we struggle to be seen, to have our minor successes seen as major accomplishments, to achieve the acclaim to which we have come to believe we are all entitled in our world of special unicorns. Do we even have ethics any more?

I cannot explain the concept of ethics any more clearly than George Mallory in his book Climbing Everest:

People ask me, "What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?" and my answer must at once be, "it is of no use.  There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.  Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation.  But otherwise nothing will come of it.  We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.  What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy.  And joy is, after all, the end of life.  We do not live to eat and make money.  We eat and make money to be able to live.  That is what life means and what life is for.  

We won't all climb Mount Everest - nor should we, the mountain is over-run by bumblies already - but we can all go out into the wild, to find our own Everests which we should rise to meet with courage, conviction and ethics.

End note:  If you want to listen to a very irreverant climbing podcast where ethics are discussed, go here.  

The Sunday Paddles: A Metaphor For Life

The 12th of January marks a year of the Sunday paddles. What started as a break from the tension of living surrounded by smouldering bush-fires, dense smoke, and intermittent evacuation orders quickly became a minor obsession. At some point I decided I would paddle every Sunday for a year. I pulled together an email list of South Coast and ACT paddlers, and every week I planned a paddle and sent an email out to the group.

My record is not perfect. I cancelled two Sunday paddles due to weather and missed one Sunday due to unavoidable travel. Group paddles were shut down due to Covid for a short period of time but as soon as the "group of 10 to exercise outdoors" order was issued, I resumed the Sunday paddles, and I continued to paddle solo or with one or two other people during the Covid shutdown.

Some days I paddled by myself, although that was rare; usually at least one or two other people joined me. Some of the people on the email list showed up to one paddle and never came again, and some have never been seen. We paddled short days, long days, out to islands, along the coast, and once even up a river.

In the early days, I had long talks with Splashalot about the purpose of the Sunday paddles as I was frequently frustrated when the nice long paddle day I had planned was shortened because almost everyone wanted to turn back. Often, Doug and I paddled twice the distance of everyone else as we would paddle to the meeting place, paddle with the group and then paddle back to our home beach again.

At some point, as always happens, chaffing against constraints wore a hole in my resolve and I came to accept that the Sunday paddles with some exceptions would be mostly easy outings. Longer, more difficult and faster outings became something to be done on other days with a select group.

I was keen to mark a year of paddling in some way. My first thought was to do a suitably long and hard paddle but that would have appealed to very few people in the group, so then I thought it would be ideal to do a trip that would be open to everyone no matter how rusty their paddle skills were. Secretly, I was hoping to see some more women show up for the paddles. Most days, even on the Sunday paddles, I am the only woman.

In a metaphor for life, there were only two of us on the paddle - Doug and I. I was disappointed. I had made a big batch of chocolate chip biscuits to share (I don't usually bake being a no sugar, no grains, no industrial seed oil kind of person), had spent a day paddling around the week before to find a good camping location, and was looking forward to marking what felt like the culmination of a significant goal with some of my friends.

But this is the reality of life. If you have a goal you must persist whether or not you have company along the way. Enjoying the process helps, a friend or two to travel with you is an extra bonus but, mostly what sets apart the losers from the winners is that the winners never quit.

A Long Wet Walk: Mount Murrengenberg and the Mongarlowe-Buckenbowra Divide

"Was it actually raining," asked Doug "or was the bush just a bit damp?" It must have been my bedraggled appearance arriving home with my clothes and back pack wet through and stained black from forest fire charcoal. "Oh, it was raining." In fact, it was a very wet day up in the hills near Clyde Mountain.

For many months, since the 2019/2020 bushfires, I had been looking at the map and the long ridge line that runs south from Mount Murrengenberg and reaches a high point of 1020 metres. If followed in its entirety, you would eventually reach the Boundary Fire Trail in Deua National Park, where you could follow fire roads and old bridle trails south to civilisation. From the Corn Trail, however, up and over Mount Murrengenberg is all trackless for the first 15 or so kilometres.

I had originally looked at doing the route as a circuit walking over the 1020 metre high point and dropping down to cross the Mongarlowe River and returning by a much easier (possibly a little longer) route along River Forest Fire Road. But we have had a very rainy year and I thought that crossing the Mongarlowe River, with the height at over 1.00 metre on the gauge at Mongarlowe was anything but a certainty. So, I decided to walk out and back along the ridge, a days outing that would involve a lot of bushwacking, and, as it turned out, considerable rain and some tenuous navigation.

Leaving the Corn Trail in light drizzle, my first objective was to go up and over Mount Murrengenberg. Mount Murrengenberg is a decidedly bushy hill and leaving the Corn Trail and following a rough compass bearing I had a fair tussle with burnt trees and heavy regrowth until I sidled up onto the "summit" itself where the forest was more open. There was no view, although along the south ridge of the "sub-summit" I did get a misty view down the Buckenbowra River valley.

A descent of a bit more than 100 metres brought me to a very old road cutting and a saddle where the real ridge walking would begin. The route is basically south. Navigation on the way south was relatively straight forward as the ridge dropped precipitously to the east and provided a rough handrail. I was soon very wet, however, as the burnt eucalpytus forest has resprouted very thickly and the small trees held quantities of rain water which sluiced down my legs.

It was cold, damp walking with a strong wind blowing up the escarpment from the coast, tendrils of mist billowing over the ridge and not at all conducive to stopping so apart from stuffing half a chicken burger in at one point, I simply walked all the way, with many intermediary ascents and descents to point 1020 where the ridge begins to descend and sidles to the west. About 4.15 hours to this point, which was suddenly seeming long as over the eastern valley a dense wall of rain rapidly approached and the coastline disappeared into gloomy grey clouds.

I would have liked an easy return along a trail or fire road, but descending to the Mongarlowe River and finding it unfordable would add many hours to this trip so I choked down half an energy bar and began to walk back.

Within half an hour, the fog had blown in so thickly it was near dark, my handrail, the precipitous edge of the ridge, had all but disappeared in the murk, and it was raining steadily blown along on a strengthening wind. I had some concerns about lightening storms but the wind so strong I could not have heard thunder anyway. I did, however, see a sugar glider run down hill, spread-eagle its front and rear paws and fly off over the Buckenbowra River valley. How cool is that?

The first half of the return trip was not too bad, and I even managed to recognise a spur ridge I had seen on the way south. As I continued north, however, the sky got darker and darker until it seemed more like 8.00 pm than 2.00 pm and I was constantly consulting the compass and walking almost entirely on a compass bearing as the rain sluiced down. Any idiot who tells you that there is no such thing as bad weather is just that, an idiot.

There are times out in the wild where I definitely have to keep a lid on some mild incipient panic, and this was one of those times. I stumbled the 160 metres uphill to the top of Mount Murrengenberg for the second time, the only thing keeping me warm was walking up the hill. Although I was a mere kilometre from the Corn Trail, it felt like much further than that and I really did not want to miss the faint foot pad as having to bushwack right out to the highway would be very slow indeed through thick tangled forest and boggy swamp.

I walked on with the compass held in front of me pointing the way. As anyone who has bushwacked knows, however, you cannot assiduously follow a bearing, particularly in tangled forest, so I was weaving around a good deal. My final check of the map indicated that on an easterly bearing I should intersect the trail in a couple of hundred metres, and finally I did. Here I made that most egregious of mistakes, luckily, corrected within 20 metres, by turning right (south) when I should have turned left (north). A final check of the compass, however, and I was walking north along an increasingly familiar route.

It was an adventure, but, like many adventures, not one I am in a hurry to repeat.

Your Car, Your Coffin

It's silly season down here; our local towns are full of tourists on holiday who seem to spend most of their vacations driving. Driving to the shops, driving to the lookouts, driving to the beaches, even driving up to our water supply dam where they spin into the parking lot and spin back out again without leaving their cars.

Last night, while I was stretching, I had SBS War Of The Worlds on and the opening scenes where the aliens attack show multitudes of people fleeing in their cars. Obviously, there is an epic traffic snarl, no-one gets anywhere and the aliens kill everyone. The crazy thing is, after the 2019/2020 bushfire season and now the pandemic, I can so imagine this happening. People who have completely lost the ability to self-locomote sitting in their cars dying while they could literally get out, walk away and live.

I prefer to adventure close to home around this time of year as the traffic snarls on the roads are simply not worth enduring, so I have seen a lot of people sitting in their cars lately. Yesterday, half way around our mountain bike loop while I was sweating blood (I am so out of shape for high intensity mountain biking) in the hot humid weather, I passed a guy who drove into the parking lot, circled around and drove out again.

Yesterday, we had a kayak training day managing to tick over 25 kilometres in about 3.5 hours (we are getting faster), and, when we landed at our home bay, there were a few people sitting in their cars, eating, drinking, scrolling along their devices, doing everything but dying and giving birth in their cars. In our new weird and getting weirder modern world, the automobile, which promised endless freedom has instead become our coffin.

Dog Save Us From Academics

Yesterday, the ABC ran a story on goal setting for the New Year. You can read the ABC story here, and the full scholarly article here. If I had to summarise the theme of either/both, it would be: if you fail at your goal, you will feel bad; it is uncomfortable to feel bad, so just lower - or "open end" - your goal so that no matter what the outcome you will have success.

Also yesterday, I read the monthly newsletter I get from Steve Bechtel at the Climb Strong team. Steve Bechtel is a climber, coach, and, I would argue one of the most articulate and intelligent of the legion of climbing coaches out there today. Oh, and he's a crusher too. Steve's missive this month was all about goal setting. But, unlike the academic who thinks we should simply move the goal post to achieve success, this month's newsletter contained three strong approaches that can be implemented right now to help us achieve our goals.

I would like to provide you with a link to Bechtel's monthly newsletter, but it is a "sign-up" service (the newsletter is free). However, I will link you to Steve's lessons from 2020 which will give you an idea of how Steve thinks. Although the focus is on climbing, the information is pertinent to any goals you may have in life be they personal, professional or recreational.

The basic premise of my argument is that these two approaches are completely divergent. The received wisdom from health coaches, dieticians, academics, etc. is that it is difficult to change behaviour or achieve goals and most people fail. Failure is uncomfortable and no-one should be uncomfortable so change the goal or lower the standard of behaviour so that you can call yourself a success. This is essentially how we have come to a point where mainstream experts recommend "moderation" and continually lower the goal posts on what is acceptable in the realm of human health and performance.

Alternatively, a dude who runs a training centre for climbers (and other athletes) in Lander, Wyoming with a track record of completing dozens of hard climbs (many first ascents), coaching diverse athletes to success and juggling family, career, business to maintain his own crusher status as he passes 50 argues for an approach that, while recognising that behaviour change (a necessary precursor to achieving any goal) is difficult has concrete and implementable strategies to help you succeed.

Ultimately, it is up to the individual to choose between these two dichotomous approaches. One offers the modern world "feel good" approach where everyone is a winner but overall standards gradually decline. The other is difficult and holds no guarantee of success, but will build resilience and fortitude.

You choose, but choose wisely, because the further you travel down the one path, the harder it is to take the other.

The Price of Adventure: Burra Peak, Burra-Oulla Wilderness

Sometimes the price of adventure is prosaic, in the case of Burra Peak, it was the price of a new tire. Last time we walked into the Burra-Oulla Wilderness we spent a good part of the trip walking along fire trails, this time we drove. And, somewhere along the not very bad fire trail we slashed the side wall of one of our tires.

If you have never had the misfortune of slashing the side wall of a tire, the resultant immediate loss of tire pressure is unmistakable. Within one kilometre of where we planned to park there was a pop and a loud hiss. We knew without looking that the tire was done. I jumped out of the car and immediately a red tailed black cockatoo emitted a deafening primeval shriek - as only black cockies can - "Good," I thought, "we are also about to be eaten by dinosaurs."

We gave some little thought to cancelling the trip and driving back out. This might seem extreme, but, on one trip to the local mountains behind our old house in Nelson, British Columbia, I tore the side walls of two tires on a 12 kilometre stretch of very rough logging road. Not only was that a really expensive day out, but, I had to walk back to our house and then, with Doug's help carry a snow-tire on a rim up a steep loose logging road back to where our vehicle was abandoned in a tiny pull-off. After a day out climbing mountains, it was quite a work-out.

After changing the tire, a lot easier on our small car than the old pick-up truck where I had to dig a hole in the road surface just to get the jack in position, we drove the final kilometre, parked and set off to walk about a kilometre uphill to where we would leave fire roads and enter the wilderness.

The peak we were heading for lies about 2.5 kilometres north of Burra Creek solidly in the Burra-Oulla wilderness, a trackless, roadless section of Deua National Park marked by steep sided gorges and clear running creeks. At 600 metres, Burra Peak is not the highest point in the area; Mount Donovan, about 6 kilometres north is just over 900 metres high. Burra Peak, however (not named on the topographic map), is the most prominent of the ridges and hills visible from Moruya, the Princes Highway, or anywhere to the north. Burra Peak has a characteristic conical shape and is ringing about by rocky bluffs all of which make it one of the more interesting peaks to walk up.

Our route was not planned to be the most expeditious, more the most scenic, as we would traverse over another rocky peak along the way that would take us past cliffs, gorges, small waterfalls and views west up the Burra Creek catchment and east to the coast.

Stepping off the Coondella Fire Trail we had easy travel down a ridge to a saddle and then a 100 metre ascent to the top of the first rocky peak. This little peak is not quite encircled by cliffs and offers excellent views in all directions.

We descended almost 500 metres down to Burra Creek via a north facing spur ridge that afforded a little easy rock scrambling but mostly just steep walking. At Burra Creek, the water level seemed as high as it had been a month previously and travel upstream was just as slow fighting a rising tide of invasives among knocked down trees and flood debris.

Gaining the south facing spur ridge we were to ascend involved a first 100 metres of steep somewhat scrabbly terrain before the angle of ascent laid back a little and we were able to continue more easily up talus and past small rock bluffs to a 510 metre spot on the ridge with views west over Burra Creek.

Burra Peak is about one kilometre to the north and involved a short walk down to a saddle and then a steep walk up with occasional rock scrambling (could be avoided) to the surprisingly bushy top. There is a big cairn and even a summit register (calls the peak "Burra Peak") with very few entries, but also no writing implement to make an entry.

We found ourselves a nice lunch spot looking west and I astonished Doug by pulling out a thermos of hot water to make tea. I do love a cup of tea at midday, never mind it was actually nearer 2.00 pm.

I had planned a somewhat longer route back to the car via two different ridges but this would have added some hours to what was already proving to be a long day so we decided to walk back down the ridge we had ascended and walk up the ridge we used to access Burra Creek on our last trip which we knew was open and easy walking.

Walking down was a bit of an exercise in ankle rolling and slithering as the talus was barely under its angle of repose and each step our feet would slip and the talus would begin sliding down hill. But, of course, bushwalking is always just one foot in front of the other and we made it to Burra Creek where we walked down stream to some rock bluffs and the start of the route out before having a last snack and ample clean creek water.

Apart from having to hike 600 metres back out of the creek, the final walk back up to Coondella Fire Trail was probably the easiest walking we had all day, and, some nine hours after leaving the car we arrived back happy to see that we still had four inflated tires.