Wamban Mountain

I have just finished the trail run that keeps on giving right until the end, Wamban trig/mountain from Little Sugarloaf Road in Deau National Park is a solid 19 km and just under 1200 metre gain round trip that goes up and down, up and down, up and down. The last kilometre when you are getting foot weary, there is one final steep down and up to cross the last creek and hike up the last ridge.

There is actually no track to the top of Wamban Mountain so you have to bushwack the final kilometre and 300 metre gain, but the bush is light and I had an almost track, almost all the way. Animals I guess as there was no foot pad, but the bush was pressed down just wide enough for me to see my feet and not stumble and stutter too much over the loose rock, fallen trees, and vines underfoot. I allowed an hour for this final bit but managed to reach the trig on top in half that time.

The views are filtered but you get a sense of deep and steep river valleys and in some places you can see out to the ocean. I occasionally think I should put these runs up on the FKT website as I suspect no-one else is doing them and even at my sluggish pace I could rack up a (meaningless) FKT.

But I don't really care enough for all that palaver. I go out and do these things because I like the challenge (pretty minor really) not because I need a FKT to prove my worth as a human. FKT's are funny things as I think it often depends on how deep the talent pool is whether or not people are really fast or just big fish in small ponds.

However, another two weeks of lockdown have passed and I have to look back at my log to see what I actually did. A bunch of power workouts, some route endurance training on my home wall, four days out rock climbing, heck, I even went out for a paddle as I have relaunched the Sunday paddles, albeit with a limit of five.

Great conditions yesterday for a paddle south of our local bay; that is if you like a lumpy two metre swell with brisk winds. We had some great down wind rides on runners, but, as usual, you had to work for them. It was somewhat comforting to see that even Splashalot was getting winded paddling hard to catch the swells.

Stay Safe Or Don't

If there is one slogan which I have come to despise over the last 18 months of the Covid pandemic - obviously I am ignoring the real pandemic which we have conveniently swept aside - it is "Stay Safe." Stay Safe is everywhere, flashing signs by the road side, at my local library, as a convenient sign off to emails, as a daily greeting or good-bye, we are continually exhorted to "Stay Safe."

At the risk of sounding crass, I say "f**k staying safe." I was not born, to live, to die in a safe cocoon. Life within the box in which we feel comfortable is a small and confining place and not somewhere I want to spend my figurative three score and ten.

Which is good, because yesterday we went rock climbing and lead climbing always, unless I am on really, really easy routes, involves at least a small frisson of fear. I have been working on leading this year as in the past I have been a bit of a timid leader afraid of taking even safe falls on well protected sport routes. In my defence, I was always climbing with people that climbed way, way harder than me so I fell and fell and fell all the time and taking all those falls on lead instead of top-rope would probably have broken me, if not physically at least mentally. Remember, I was weak as f**k.

But back to the safety theme, I am also working through attaining Sea Skills under Paddle Australia and as part of that process I just finished reading hundreds of thousands of words so tedious and boring that they would make your eyes bleed. One of the documents is this multi-page, multi-level, stratified, tabulated, cross-referenced, third party verified matrix that you are exhorted to fill in every time you go paddling. I encourage you to click on the link as I find it hard to depict this document in anything resembling a fair description.

I can only assume PA harbours some well paid policy wonks whose entire job is sitting around coming up with policies and procedures that consume entire forests of paper with ideas that could be summarised by "don't be an idiot."

After 40 years of knocking about in the wilderness I feel like I have seen just about everything, including dead bodies, but I have never seen anyone fill in a document like this before heading out to engage in an adventure sport. No-one does this. My own personal opinion is that life in the modern world dredged in toxic sugar, grains and industrial seed oils with inactivity reaching gob-smacking levels is that if we want to assess our real risks we start with what we put on our plates to eat.

Stay Safe, no, actually don't, go take some risks.

We are all born to die - the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live. Gina Lollabridgida.

Weak As F......

I found some old videos on the computer the other day taken on a couple of rock climbing trips to the USA (Smith Rocks and Vantage/aka Frenchmans Coulee) with Doug and another climber friend of ours. The videos are circa 2010 and, at the time, my training logs were kept in paper notebooks, not on the computer. When we moved continents I recycled the paper books so all that information is now lost. I would like to know how I was training during those years because it is clear from the videos that I was weak, "weak as f**k" as Andy Kirkpatrick would say.

Climbers these days climb harder than ever and it is surely due, in no small measure, to advancements in training. Among recreational climbers the advancement in grades is certainly not due to low body weight because over-fat climbers are more plentiful than ever.

We, the royal we, Doug, myself, all my climbing friends, climbed a lot, multiple days a week at the crag, rock climbing road trips ranging from a weekend to multiple months, and yet, looking back, we had all pretty much topped out in the mid to upper 5.10's or low 5.11's (Ewbank 20 to 22). It was not lack of will, it just seemed as if none of us had really successful climbing training plans.

The internet was just becoming a thing, youtube did not exist, sponsored climbers were sparse, as were coaches and regimented training programs. The Horst books were THE bibles for training and, at the time, Horst did not really believe in any GPP (General Physical Preparedness) so few people were training foundational human movements like squats, deadlifts and presses. And, of course, Crossfit, controversial as it became in later years, was so fringe it was virtually unknown.

I would be happy to wager, loss of training logs notwithstanding, that I probably could not have done a single push-up or pull-up as I am pretty sure the video years preceded my Crossfit days. Whatever you might think about Crossfit, introducing power lifting and olympic lifts to the masses, including the climbing community, was a positive outcome.

These days, as I close in on 6 decades on the planet, I consider maintaining my current muscle mass and strength a win. But, and here is the weird thing, I think I might be stronger in my late 50's than I was in my late 40's. I credit that to, not only a life long passion for training and performance, but also the intellectual curiosity to keep learning.

Redpoint Day

Brilliant day out redpointing two new (for me) routes.  Stoked, psyched, all the things.  Don't let lockdown stop you from getting after it. 

Freedom And Fun

In one of those political moves that you simply cannot make up, the Northern Territories Chief Minister promotes a drunken sandbar party - "freedom and fun" - as a reward for hard borders and Covid zero. Once again I am struck and, in truth, saddened by the extreme dichotomy of human behaviour. Because, the sand bar party occurred on almost the same day that The Alpinist, the new movie about Marc-Andre Leclerc by Sender films (makers of The Dawn Wall and Valley Uprising) premiered in main-stream movie theatres.

Few Australians will have heard of Marc-Andre Leclerc, undoubtedly one of Canada's best, brightest, most talented, creative, driven alpinists whose brief but illustrious career was marked by audacious solo climbs of some of the world's hardest routes.

PC: B.StJ

I first encountered Marc-Andre on a backwoods hiking forum that was largely ruled by chest-beating males whose big accomplishment was a seven kilometre backpack for a weekend camping trip. Leclerc, whose voice had barely broken (he was 15 at the time) was attempting and pulling off audacious alpine trips, often solo, in the Cascade Range close to his home town. I remember thinking at the time that he would either die young or become a brilliant alpinist. Turns out both can be true at the same time.

Yesterday, I ran 22 kilometres up Bolaro Mountain in Buckenbowra State Forest. It was a beautiful day out, chilly in the wind with grey skies and threatening clouds scudding past blown by a stiff southerly. On the final run along the ridge, I had views east to the ocean and south to the Deau National Park. I explored some big and hard - for me to climb - boulders, scared up a couple of small wallabies, and even saw a pack of wild dogs. Near the end of the run, I was getting a wee bit foot sore, wondering how far I had to go, thinking "is that enough, can I just walk now?" when I started thinking again about Marc-Andre, and how unlikely it is that he ever thought "is that enough?"

Very few of us will experience what Barry Blanchard describes in The Alpinist: "Moving over the mountains unencumbered is about as close as you're going to get to sprouting wings and being totally free. Absolutely awake. Absolutely alive." But, we can each, in our own small way try. Whether that is running up a small mountain in the woods, carrying a backpack seven kilometres to camp, or climbing Torre Egger solo in winter, the key is to do something that stretches you today and everyday, something that requires more grit, more determination, more skill and perserverence than drinking yourself senseless on a sandbar.

Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Mary Oliver

Getting A Leg Up

This year I have finally decided to get "Sea Skills" or Grade 3 in NSW Sea Kayak Club (NSW SKC) language so I have been reading through pages and pages and pages of tedious documents to make sure I know what I am supposed to know to get some kind of qualification for things I have been doing for many years now without that qualification. If you wonder what the point is, you're not alone.

When I first joined the NSW SKC, I thought some sort of formal qualification of paddlers was a great idea - within reason. I had come from a small mountain town in Canada and had spent 20+ years as a volunteer leader in various outdoor clubs. Leading trips filled with diverse participants taught me so much I would never have learned had I just done the same trips with a group of friends of known skill, fitness and fortitude. As a volunteer leader, you pretty quickly learn that individuals, almost universally, over-estimate their ability and under-estimate the difficulty.

The most egregious example I remember was a woman who came on a week long mountaineering camp who said she "led 5.10a comfortably" but was pushing herself above that grade and reported Himalayan snow climbing experience. When we got out into the mountains, it turned out she had never climbed trad routes, was scared on class 3 and had no idea to cross a flat snow covered glacier. Later, we went rock climbing together at a local crag and she could lead 5.7 sport climbs but nothing else.

In the club I led trips for, most accidents were what would be classified as "slips on snow" in Accidents in North American Mountaineering. For years, I ran an annual snow climbing workshop in spring and it was amazing how many people who had been hiking around in the mountains on snow covered peaks for decades had no idea how to properly kick a step, use an ice axe in both self-belay and self-arrest mode, ascend and descend steep snow slopes, assess risk, plan a reasonable route, and don't even get me started on actually self-arresting. I would like to say that through the years, I got virtually everyone through the program at least once, but there were many, many people who I met on trips or heard about who had "slips on snow" who refused to come to the free workshop. I think it was ego.

As a volunteer leader, no qualifications required, the only way you could estimate the ability of the individual was through detailed and pointed questioning, and people who want to come on trips have a way of answering questions that does not really answer the question, or by observation on the trip, by which point it might be too late.

But back to the NSW SKC and Grade 3/Sea Skills. Paddle Australia has a clear list of skills, knowledge and equipment that an individual certified to grade 3 must have to pass the assessment process. That would seem to give leaders and other paddlers on any trip some kind of confidence that individuals certified have a fairly equivalent skill set. Sounds like a really good idea. What could possibly go wrong?

After running a year of Sunday paddles, I discovered that practice is somewhat different to theory. Many people who came on the Sunday paddles were technically qualified to Grade 3/Sea Skills, but were, in practice not at Grade 3 level. These folk plugged along fine as long as conditions were easy but when it came to landing in small surf, rolling a kayak, even getting back into a kayak without landing, suddenly glaring differences between the theoretical and the actual came to light.

Like most of life's complex problems I don't think there is a simple answer to this conundrum. Relying on individuals to keep up their strength, aerobic capacity, and skills clearly does not work, but requiring people to recertify every year to ensure that they still meet certain criteria is both onerous and expensive for individuals and assessors alike.

It would be a great shame for communities and the mentoring process if all the experienced fit paddlers suddenly decided only to paddle with experienced and fit individuals all the time. There are lots of people, and I was - still am - most definitely one of them who can improve their skill and ability if they can get a leg up from the more experienced. No matter what level we are at, we can always reach up or down and help someone else out.

The Menage of Lockdown

The passing of another week of lockdown and our local lockdown has been reinstated indefinitely. We missed being one of the Local Government Areas (LGA's) released from lockdown by one case and about one day which reveals something about the arbitrariness of these measures. I try not to comment on lockdowns and Covid in this blog as it is a divisive subject the "truth" of which grows more opaque by the day, but instead focus on being thankful that within our LGA we can mountain bike, bush walk, trail run, rock climb, boulder, swim, surf, and kayak.

I had to look back at my training log to see what I actually did this week as lockdown weeks blend into one long menage of blandness. One Sunday I ran up to Mogo trig on the single track. Now that I think about it, I remember watching rain sweeping up the coast from the hills to the south which was my queue to run home as I had only a thin shirt with me. Monday, I walked along to my beach side bouldering spot and spent a couple of hours there. Tuesday was another long run, this time from Durras south. I had initially intended to run down to North Head but I have done that many times so after visiting a few of the beaches I ran instead up to Pine Knob on old forest trails. There are no pines but Murramarang National Park has lovely spotted gum and burrawang forests and it was really quiet. I met only one other fellow riding his mountain bike around the tracks.

Route endurance on my home wall on Wednesday for a solid pump, and then I biked up to the forest and lapped Burnt Offerings and the Dam Loop. Our mountain bike trails are looked after by anonymous trail fairies and get well used by local walkers, runners and bikers. Thursday I walked the rock platforms, finger boarded and strength trained. My log seems to indicate that at this advanced age I need about four days to fully recover between strength workouts. I don't think any youth fully appreciates how much your training has to shift as you age to accommodate extended recovery. Endurance, as long as you don't have aerobic deficiency syndrome, is easy to bang out day after day but strength and power, hard (whatever that means to you) rock climbing just takes longer to recover from.

Friday was the day after we got our second dose of the Covid vaccine and, predictably, we both felt pretty ordinary. I was going to run up to Round Hill lookout and down to the cemetery (mostly single track) but settled for walking instead. I made it, but the rest of the day was much more sedentary. I don't do illness well as I am never sick. It is almost a decade since I last had even a mild virus. And, here we are at Saturday. It is a glorious sunny day and a good day for a beach walk.

Lockdowns, Hang-Boarding and Camping Out

A rainy Saturday marks the end of another week in lockdown. After Sunday's failure on Erics Ridge, I went out for one of my regular loop walks on Monday and, as commonly happens, a simple stroll turned into bushwacking and scrambling up headlands composed of decomposing friable rock. Ah well, the view was good.

After being a rock climber for multiple decades, I have finally started hang-boarding. Perhaps my mediocre performance as a climber is due to NOT hang-boarding for decades but I have always felt I had way more prominent weaknesses to work than my fingers. Now, twice a week, I do an "integrated strength workout" as per Steve Bechtel and hang during my strength sessions. I am climbing better, I think, but I am also aware of how subjective rock climbing can be.

This week I had two days out climbing, plus a couple of sessions on my wall. One day was doing some bouldering in the local forest which was both good and bad as there are hundreds of boulders but the granite tends to exfoliate which does not inspire confidence on high top-outs with no spotter.

On Wednesday evening, I carried all my overnight gear up the hill behind our suburb into the woods and, after a couple of hours strolling along the single track scaring up the occasional kangaroo, I found a campsite for the night and set up my tent and fluffed out my new sleeping bag. After my last bushwacking bout with inadequate gear I had decided that I was going to replace all my junky worn out crap with gear that actually functioned appropriately. So I had a wonderfully bright head-lamp (with a lock function so it does not turn on in your pack), and my new sleeping bag and spent a quiet night in the woods with only the frapping of frogs and some very weird bird calls as accompaniment. In the morning, I walked for another hour or so until I came to a sunny, grassy area where I brewed up some cowboy coffee and enjoyed the early morning.

On my way home, I met a fellow traveller also carrying a pack around and keeping fit during the lockdown. He was brewing tea on a little jet-boil stove by the side of the trail and we had a nice chat about the benefits of walking in the woods. It was a moment out of a Thoreau book.