Failure On Erics Ridge

I wanted to call this report "Defeated By Two Kilometres of Bush-Wacking" but then I remembered the first ever ski traverse Doug and I did with the inimitable Captain Bivouac in the Coast Mountains of BC in 2002 to pioneer a new route into and up Mount Elaho. Robin (Captain Bivouac) called the report "Failure On Mount Elaho" and it is written in typical Captain Bivouac style on the Bivouac.com site but you have to be a paid member to read it. The report is really funny, in the way Robin characteristically is, and I remember that this was our first ski traverse through the Coast Mountains. Klaus Haring, another well known figure in BC Coastal mountaineering navigated the entire route with a photocopied black and white map and a compass and, after 6 days skiing in a massive loop around the Elaho Icefield and over many peaks, Klaus brought us back out to the logging road where we had parked our cars approximately 6 metres from where we had first entered the forest. This was in the glory days before GPS units and, in case you don't recognise the significance of that feat, it shows absolutely top notch navigational skills.

But I am out in the thick bush of Australia not the icefields of Canada. I had set out with the idea of taking a fire trail through Currowan State Forest for about 4 kilometres to a spot where I could drop off the ridge and cross the headwaters of Nelligen Creek, many kilometres upstream of the tidal limit but still at only 100 metres above sea level (ASL). Then, I would bushwack uphill for about 300 vertical metres over 2 kilometres to reach another fire trail which runs along a rocky ridge overlooking Cabbage Tree Creek in Monga National Park.

I have previously run from the Kings Highway over a couple of ridges to Cabbage Tree Creek, a distance of about 18 kilometres on infrequently used fire trails, and I have also run up "Erics Ridge" from the Old Bolaro Road, which is about 14 kilometres and pleasantly downhill all the way back. Here's a sneak peak of what happened: the bushwacking is horrendous!

On fire trails, I made good time to a 220 metre knoll above Nelligen Creek. It was misty rain but not heavy enough for a rain jacket or rain pants although I had both with me as I wanted to avoid another hypothermic bushwacking event. At the knoll, I left the track and struggled downhill for 120 vertical metres over about half a kilometre to Nelligen Creek. Very thick burrawang regrowth after the fires, fallen trees, spiky vines, the usual. Across Nelligen Creek I started the 300 metre climb, with rain pants on now as the bush was soaking, but, I did not want to put on my brand new Goretex rain jacket as this kind of bush is death to new and old jackets alike. So, I just got wet.

This entire valley from ridge to creek to ridge burnt in 2019/2020 and the regrowth has to be experienced to be believed. Acacia and burrwangs have proliferated, both are now well over my head and growing in a density of about 100 stems per 10 centimetres square. This is only a small exaggeration, there is literally only a centimetre or two between most stems. In between, although there is not much in between left is head high Cobblers Peg (a noxious invasive weed) and draped over it all are vines made from high tensile cord. Oh, and there are huge trees lying down buried under a metre or so of vegetation.

After an hour of fighting through this and gaining perhaps 75 metres, my rain pants had been ripped to shreds and I had decided this was just not worth it. I turned around and fought my way back down to Nelligen Creek. I knew without checking the map that I was downstream of where I had first crossed but I also knew that the old fire trail uphill and east made an unmissable back stop and all I had to do was bash up until I intersected it. By some crazy fluke of fire behaviour, the slope I walked up had not burnt in the fires and was the usual open bush with big widely spaced gum trees and an understory of scattered burrawangs. It was really easy walking. So easy that I ended up following a spur ridge back down to Nelligen Creek again to the upper end of some private land, and then back up again to intersect the fire trail.

To make a loop, I decided I would walk back over another 240 metre bump that has a lot of exposed granite. Although I would be bushwacking again, the bush around the granite bedrock is pretty open and there are even a couple of very faint old trails. Since the fires, the trails have pretty much disappeared (a good thing) but the walking was easy and after a couple of kilometres through the bush I intersected my first fire trail and walked down to the car.

Given the regrowth, it will probably be decades before the forest fully matures back to open spaced trees with a low under-story. Until then, I am staying out of these areas or using tracks.

Running Home

A week into our lockdown and any half baked plan to write a blog post a day during lockdown went out the window a few days in. What I really want to do while we are in lockdown is make the time count by doing productive things and getting out into nature everyday. We have a home renovation project under way but in our typical fashion if the choice is go rock climbing or fuss with home renovation, we go rock climbing. There is that old saying about no one lying on their death bed wishes they spent more time at the office and I interpret that to mean no-one finds themselves living out their final days in a care facility thinking about how epic it was to have a new kitchen.

Today I did one of those quirky weird things that people do too little of which is ride public transit somewhere and then self-propel yourself home. Now I am lucky that I can run back home almost entirely on bush tracks, mostly single track, but even in the metropolis of Sydney, this is an option for many people, it's just that people don't think to do it. Something about growing up and/or growing wealthy and taking public transit becomes stigmatised, something only poor people who can't afford cars do. Me, I love public transit. Over the years, Doug and I have used public transit for so many fun adventures, from week long kayak trips to simple days out.

So I walked a block or two from home, jumped on the bus, got off half an hour later and over a couple of hours ran home on bush tracks. There were a few people out riding the single track on mountain bikes, and one other walker, but, except for those few encounters, it was just me, the birds, lizards and kangaroos.

Currowan Trig, McCardys Creek And No One Owes You Anything

On day four of our lockdown, I did a circuit up and around Currowan Trig. Because this is Australia, there are roads everywhere, but most of them are older fire trails and the forest is beautiful particularly on a sunny day in August. I have been up Currowan Trig before when I was carrying 12 kg up steep hills for power endurance (PE) training but the direct route up, while steep enough is a bit too brushy when bush-wacking to go fast enough for a decent PE workout.

This time I took an old fire trail up to the north end where an easy bushwack through open timber and granite boulders got me to the trig. Then southeast back into the bush to intersect McCardys Road (a compass was handy), down to McCardys Creek where there was a little clear water running, back up an east facing ridge then traversing north and intersecting my approach route again.

The old road up the east ridge (runs out at a saddle) had no tire tracks on it. This is unusual. Normally if there is somewhere to drive, someone will drive, even where driving is illegal (such as beaches in NSW) someone will drive because a surprisingly large segment of our population believes they have the right to go everywhere.

I was listening to a new (to me) podcast two days ago and the discussion was about "climbers dirty tricks;" are kneebars on routes cheating, what about fans to reduce moisture, stick-clipping, etc. The consensus seemed to be that it was totally OK to stick clip an entire route, as if the presence of protection bolts gave you the right to be on the climb.

When I lived in Canada, there were a few big mountain routes that I would have loved to climb, but I was simply not a good enough climber to do those routes. It is one of those things where I don't think any amount of focused training would have changed. Although I can be better today than I was yesterday that does not mean that I can win on the world cup bouldering circuit or climb All Along The Watchtower on Howser Tower in the Bugaboos. Having goals is fantastic but unrealisable goals are simply delusion.

Stick clipping a route you are projecting is now an accepted manoeuvre in the modern climbers repertoire before going for the redpoint, but stick clipping your way up multiple routes because you want to climb those routes while you are on vacation seems analogous to driving everywhere even when driving is banned to protect a resource. I know that many people believe humans are the acme of evolution, as if life is some kind of continuously rising trajectory, and, sadly, human sprawl has pretty much covered the entire planet. As an aside, I suspect there are wisps of bog roll and a frozen turd or two at both the north and south poles.

Perhaps it is time for humans to consider that there are places we may not go unless on foot, and climbs we should not do unless we can actually climb them. Basic human rights concern access to adequate food, water, shelter, etc., not you can go everywhere and do anything. There should be a price to pay for doing things that are more difficult, challenging and/or dangerous and at the end of the day "No-one owes you anything." Amelia Boone.

The Goal Is To Keep The Goal The Goal

Dan John is famous for quipping that the most important thing about training is to "keep the goal the goal." It is so easy in the digital age where a constant stream of different workout/training plans stream across our feeds to jump from one training plan to another simply because the next routine up seems somehow better/more interesting than the last. Grinding out with consistency day after day can be so easily trumped by novelty.

My resistance training for the last few months has been along the "Easy Strength" lines, which means I never feel really hammered from training and have energy to focus on specific climbing training - endurance laps on my home wall, limit bouldering outdoors, projecting. I never feel really sledged because if you are training the Easy Strength way you virtually never go to maximum lifts. Sometimes, when you are used to finishing a workout maxed out, this can feel like cheating, and that nagging voice in back of your head says "shouldn't you be lifting harder?'

And then you go out on a climbing day - which brings me to day three of our lockdown - and you feel really strong, climb routes with relative ease which were a huge struggle before, finish only because it is getting late not because you are tired and realise that the training works, and keeping the goal the goal is the goal.

Lizards Can Lounge But Humans Should Not

Day two of our lockdown, YMMV (your mileage may vary) as this is day 48 or 49 for some folks. New lockdowns announced today and others extended; but, if this is the worst the western world has to deal with we should feel lucky as the Taliban takes Afghanistan and an earthquake shatters Haiti. Even in our hyperconnected world, or perhaps because of, it is easy to fixate on our own issues and forget our lucky we are to live in wealthy and free countries.

Low tide was early morning so I rambled around the rock platforms and along our local beaches for a couple of hours. I passed a guy doing squats on a rock platform using a rock for weight. He was super fit looking, the way most people probably looked half a century ago but the way hardly anyone looks now. A clear case of motivation and consistency trumping just about anything else.

There were lots of lizards laying in the sun and I almost stepped on two. My own training day at home using our home gym - what a great thing to have if you have room in your house. Ours is very basic but does the job, and enables us to maintain consistency with ease. Very little is needed for an effective home gym: a barbell, some plates, a rack, and a pull-up bar pretty much covers everything. You could purchase the whole set up for around what most people spend on junk food and coffee in a week.

Beaches And Bouldering

Now that the entire state of NSW is in lockdown, joining the ACT, and much of Victoria, I thought I might as well keep the blog going for at least the first week of our lockdown. On paper, the lockdown is scheduled to last a week but the Sydney and area lockdown which started seven weeks ago had such an inauspicious beginning too and no-one, least of all the people in charge, have any inkling when that will end as case numbers continue to rise.

It was a great day for a paddle, with calm winds, flat seas, glorious sunshine, and, we would have been paddling with the squad, but - lockdown. Up and down the south coast there must have been kayaks out in groups of two off the individual communities where people from our squad live. I saw a couple of kayaks cruising along the beaches near us.

Instead of paddling, I took myself off bouldering. Not a common activity around here so I get weird looks as I walk along the beach with my crash pad on my back and frequently hear "what is that huge backpack?" whispered as I walk past. I had a good session, until my shoe fell apart, but I managed to climb a bit more after that mucking around climbing up a very easy boulder no hands. The beaches were quieter than normal and it felt like spring had arrived which made me a bit sad as I love winter.

Choosing Perfection

Today is the last day of my one month of daily blog posts. Astute readers will notice that I actually missed a day - yesterday. By the time I was sitting down to write last night it was 8.00 pm, past the time I start my daily flexibility and mobility routines and my mind was pretty blank.

Often times these kind of 30 day challenges are introduced as a gateway to get people to change something in their lives to promote health, well being, or in some other way make their lives better. I've never been a big believer in 30 day challenges. Philosophically I believe that if you are going to change something you should commit and try until you succeed. In all likelihood any change that you institute is going to take a heck of a lot longer than a month, and in reality will most likely take the rest of your life. Sure, the new behaviour gets easier, but I'm not sure anything worthwhile ever gets easy. Sitting at the doughnut shop drinking coffee and eating sugar bombs is easy, keeping your house stocked with healthy food and never eating sugar, grains or industrial seed oils is a life time journey that you start afresh every single day.

I used to listen to a podcast back in the early, heady days before "paleo" became a trendy term and the junk food industry took over a movement that is actually about eating a species appropriate diet and moving in a species appropriate way. One of the listener questions was about "leaning out" (aka losing body fat) and the host responded in this - loosely paraphrased way - "training hard for an hour or two a day is easy compared to monitoring your what you eat and drink every hour of every day for one year and then two, three, four...." which is what is entailed in "leaning out."

In days past when we did not live surrounded by cheap, hyperpalatable foods that were mere steps away from where we sit this was not an issue, but in the modern world it is a war that the overwhelming majority of people lose. I know many people who can do really hard things for a short period of time - a few hours, a day, even a week - but simply cannot go without eating ultra-processed food (anything with more than three ingredients) - often multiple times a day.

I could have made my blog post a day challenge easier by instituting some two simple rules that I live by almost 100% of the time: If it is important do it every day and do it - whatever it is - early. Most of us have more energy in the morning and it is amazing the mental boost you get from doing the things that are important to you every day and early every day. Somehow these two simple acts seem to set the day up as a win situation.

The old dictum use it or lose it holds true for 30 day challenges or rest of your life habit changes. Doing things that are mentally and physically difficult is a constant challenge. The human body and mind wants nothing more than to sink to the level of least effort. From an evolutionary stand point this makes perfect sense and modern society, in the crazy way that we have most things upside down now, has exalted sloth, greed and gluttony so that they sit at the top of the pillar. Of course, the names have been changed and rebranded as "luxury living" and lifestyles that we all deserve, which sounds so much more elegant than a list of the seven deadly sins.

If I sound like an ascetic, by modern world standards, I would agree. I think there is value in pursuing the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance as goals in their own right. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Who among us does not strive for perfection?

No Excuses

I was going to take a camera rock climbing with us today, but, I forgot. Everyone knows that if there are only two people climbing, every shot is a butt-shot so unless you are into that kind of thing the pictures are not really that interesting. In lieu of a current photo I have banged in a picture from El Portrero Chico in Mexico of a route called Jungle Boy. My friend Dany, well into her 60's at the time led this pitch and fell off again and again until finally she pulled the big roof. I was so proud of her.

There is a lesson in there for anyone who wants to use age as an excuse.

Strength and Specificity

 I ran up to Round Hill lookout today. The last time I did any running was in January, an age ago if you are talking about maintaining endurance. If the endurance junkies who tell us to run and run and run to maintain endurance, and not do any strength or power training are right, I would struggle, get tired, have a slower time, or all of the above. In fact, both my average and my maximum speed was faster than in the past, and I felt good; good enough to train on my climbing wall later in the day.

Perhaps Dan John, Pavel, Mark Rippetoe, and all the other great strength coaches that assert that building strength and power also improves endurance are right. The more capacity you have, the less you have to expend on low level sub maximal efforts (aka endurance).

Specificity counts, of course, but Strong First as the slogan goes is always a good notion when thinking about training. I was thinking about specificity today as I jogged along the single track. People get knotted up about specificity in simple endurance sports like jogging or cycling, and specificity is important but you can "hack" specificity as well. I can train for a flat water kayak trip on the ocean, but I cannot appropriately train for an ocean kayak trip on flat water. Similarly, if I can run hilly, technical trails, my local Park Run, on a flat course with ample pavement will be much easier.

The Body Manual

It has always seemed a frightful shame to me that the human body comes with no instruction manual. Something super simple like: eat single ingredient foods as close to their base form as possible, pick up heavy things and carry them about for a while then put them down again, change levels throughout the day (ie. get up and down off the floor), meditate, spend time in nature, move often in multiple different planes, be grateful, pursue meaningful human relationships and disconnect from screens.

That is a good start for a manual on how to live a healthy life. Everything on the list is either free or pretty cheap so the only barrier is getting past our addicted brains.

Going Back Again

We are dirt-bagging it, sleeping in the back of our car before walking into the Deua. The windows are streaming with condensation and, it turns out, rain, and I am hunkered down, curled into a tight ball in my 30 year old down sleeping bag wearing multiple layers of clothing. It is cold and will only be colder the next night when we are sleeping in our equally decrepit but few years younger tent even though we have brought our full-on four season winter mountaineering tent from Integral Designs in Canada.

I remembered back to our last overnight bushwalking trip when I had thought: "must replace down sleeping bags, headlamps, and rain jacket" as all had pretty much blown up; and here we were in the same old gear with the same old problems just a month or two later. I remember on that last trip peaking into Alison's tent - a high end brand new ultralight tent - where she was luxuriating in deep piles of insulation like Cleopatra reclining on her many cushions. I shuffled back to our tent, 10 metres away where our down bags were worn as thin as cheap, one ply toilet paper and were about as insulating. There are benefits to not having a pathological aversion to shopping.

When I got up at first light in the morning to brew up some coffee, the mist was strikingly like rain, and, after standing outside for a few minutes while the stove boiled water, I came to the conclusion that this was indeed rain. Not fog, nor mist, nor haar, this was rain. The forecast had called for rain, but, with what Doug calls the "Sandra distortion field" in full effect, I had somehow managed to skim over that part of the forecast. Now, however, I was thinking about our rain pants, left at home because we thought we would be carrying five litres of water, and my rain jacket which had delaminated during our last trip leaving long streams of seam sealing tape hanging off in strips and about as water proof as, well, here we go again, one ply toilet paper.

We were no longer planning to carry five litres of water as the first in a series of disruptions to this trip had been finding no bridge, just a deep ford, across the initial creek. With a standard vehicle we were essentially stopped at the main road. So, we were taking, or attempting, a different route, extra water not required. Rain pants, however would have been handy. Water we would find in buckets and buckets and buckets.

Dressed in as many layers as we thought we could spare (in other words everything but a pair of long-johns and our puff jackets) we started walking along the fire trail. After about an hour, when we were modestly wet, we got to the point where we thought we should leave the fire trail and search for an old bridle track that descends deep into the Deau wilderness. Before the big fires of 2019/2020, this trail had been navigable, now with dense regrowth and little to no traffic it had completely disappeared.

The big question after the Black Summer of fires is "how dense is the regrowth?" As time passes, the regrowth gets thicker and thicker and is, in many places already virtually impenetrable. On the ridge we were descending, the impenetrable stage is still a season or two away. Come summer, with warmer weather and ample moisture in the soil, I suspect this ridge will be far worse for travel. In winter, it was not too bad, if you count a density of regrowing eucalypts at 10 per 10 square centimetres not too bad. At higher elevations, the eucalpyts were about waist high, as we got lower that moved up to chest high. Walking through, it did not really matter whether it was raining or not as we could not have got wetter. Each eucalypt, so tightly packed together as they are, wore a heavy coating of water and each step was a bucket of cold water thrown at your body in some kind of Crossfit EMOM (every minute on the minute) except this was every 10 seconds on the 10 seconds.

Our hands turned into curled up useless claws, I was shivering uncontrollably, and Doug was stumbling about tripping over sticks and stumps. There was no trail and all I could think about was getting to the valley bottom so we could put up the tent, crawl inside and try to rewarm ourselves. And then I remembered our toilet paper thin sleeping bags....

At some point, far too late in the day, we said to each other "This is shit, let's turn around." We had a few kilometres of bush-wacking, twice that of fire trail walking and about 800 metres of gain to get back to the car. We walked back without stopping, I could not stop, I was simply too cold and my hands were barely functioning. When I got back to the car, I fumbled to undo zippers, belts, buckles and buttons. I could see my hands but they did not seem to follow instructions from my brain. When I managed to strip all my clothes off, I finally realised why I had been so cold - every piece of clothing right down to my underwear was wringing wet. I looked with astonishment at my skin which was mottled in the way that cadavers are mottled.

I put on all the dry clothes I had left in the car, two puff jackets and shivered while Doug brewed up some hot water for tea. Driving down the road, with the heater blowing high, after about a half hour, I finally warmed up enough to take one puff jacket off. Doug, whose gear is in better shape than mine, had stayed dry on his torso and was thus not nearly as chilled as I.

Winding down the hill to our home town as evening moved in, we began planning our return trip, because outdoor adventurers have remarkably short memories and it does not seem to matter how many times we get shellacked, we still go back again.

Your Greatest Strength Begets Your Greatest Weakness

The 25 day blog post streak was broken but that was only because Doug and I were off getting a shellacking in the wilderness - more on that in a later post.

This post is, to quote William Shakespeare is about how "your greatest strength begets your greatest weakness." Doug and I hate shopping with the kind of passion that is generally only reserved for politics and romantic interests. In many ways, this is a wonderful way to live. We don't feel avarice for the possessions of other people, we are largely impervious to our pervasive consumption culture, we save money as well as precious environmental resources, and we don't have to deal with reams of junk that we bought thinking it would make us eternally happy (hint: it never does).

There is, however, a point at which avoiding shopping makes more problems than it avoids, and that is when the weather is shit, the bush is thick, and your gear is not up to the task at hand because it is between 10 and 30 years old and has long ago worn completely out.

Body Tension

Day 24 in the 30 day challenge of writing every day. There is a hiccup coming up, but that does not diminish yesterday as a work on all the rock climbing projects day. The key to climbing here is holding yourself into steep rock with small slopers. There is no shortage of holds for hands and feet, but for long crux sections the hand holds are slopers and the rock is steep. It is necessary to generate a lot of body tension for a long (relatively) period of time. Rock climbing is such an engaging sport because no sooner have you mastered one climb than another comes along demanding a new and different repertoire of physical and mental strength and power.

I did not take any pictures, as I was either belaying or climbing so I have plugged in a picture from an area called Tieton in the northwestern USA. It is not the easiest picture to make out but you can see my friend, who always had great body tension and was bullish strong, climbing a steep, overhanging wall. We were climbing in the area for about a week and I struggled every day. It was exhausting, mentally and physically.

All Along The Watchtower

All Along The Watchtower is both a classic Dylan song and a highly coveted route on Howser Tower in the Bugaboo Range of the Purcell Mountains in British Columbia, Canada.

"There must be some way out of here," said the Joker to the thief,

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.

Business men they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

What a song for our times, Covid lockdowns, drunken, philandering and corrupt politicians, a disengaged public. Does anyone see a way out of this?

Slow And Heavy Versus Fast And Light

 A couple of days ago, Doug and I walked 20 kilometres from Dolphin Point to Bawley Point along the coast. As adventures go, it was pretty soft. Sure, we got up at O Dark O'Clock, but that was only so we could get the 8.05 am bus from Bawley Point and wanted time for a coffee before we left. There was no elevation gain to speak of, no raging river crossings, no crevassed glaciers or knife edge ridges, just a pleasant walk with temperatures in the mid teens. Despite all that, I had a full day pack - gloves, puffy jacket, fleece sweater, long pants, beanie, food, water, thermos of tea, first aid kit. When I hefted my pack onto the bus I thought, "gosh, that is remarkably heavy."

So, it is with the caveat that I tend to lug a lot of gear about, that I approach the current "light and fast" trend. Arguably, this originated with Marc Twight and was made popular with publication of the book "Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, High And Fast," although Yvon Choinard is reported to have quipped, a decade or so earlier that "if you carry bivi gear you will bivi" so perhaps Marc Twight was derivative like the rest of us.

Listening to the latest Sharp End podcast where the 21 year old protagonist from Iowa was on a "fast and light" ascent of Ellingwood Ridge on La Plata in Colorado - apparently a helmet is too heavy - I find myself thinking that the difference between Marc Twight going fast and light and a gym climber from Iowa planning a fast and light ascent are worlds apart.

After hearing of several dozen similar incidents where, like all classic Mills and Boone romance novels, only the names of the protagonists and the routes change, I am beginning to think that you need to earn the right to go fast and light by going slow and heavy for a few years. Prove me wrong.

Make It Happen

I spent today hanging off a cliff face deep in the forest. After about 14 days on the project, I finally passed a big milestone today. I am super stoked with all the progress that has been made and now the fun begins. When I got home, a bit earlier than normal, I had my monthly Climb Strong email from Bechtel and it was enlightening as usual.

The moral, if there is one, is, if there is something you want out of life, it is up to you to make it happen.

Taking Transit

This morning Doug and I jumped on the school bus that runs from Kioloa to Ulladulla and rode from Bawley Point up to Dolphin Point. Alighting at Dolphin Point, we walked 20 kilometres along the coast back to our car at Bawley Point. This is a great trip, and you - dear reader - should check the bus schedule and the tide and go out and do it. You can walk the entire way on the coast, no need to tread on any man-made surface. Actually, that is not quite correct, there is a small bridge over a side branch of Burril Lake that you need to cross to get to the beach.

After that, it is either rock platform or beach. The rock platforms are fantastic on this route. Mostly really easy walking but some boulders to scramble and a few places where you have to climb a little bit. Between rock platforms are long beaches, short beaches, hidden beaches, and tiny bays.

There are two things I notice that adults seem to stop doing once they pass a certain age, one is taking public transit - which I love - the other is playing around on boulders - which I also love. This trip has both. How awesome is that?