Mount Morgan

In keeping with our penchant to always go the longest way self powered to avoid as much driving as possible, we were planning to hike up Mount Morgan from the north instead of the much shorter and more popular southern route. The day trip would be in excess of 30 kilometres so we were hoping for a drier weather day. I had woken early the day before to drizzle and low cloud so we had delayed a day. In the middle of the drizzly day, when the weather lifted a little, Doug had walked into the Oldfields Hut to see what the trail was like for cycling, while I had picked up a track that took me from Old Snowy Campground down to Tantangara Reservoir.

Up in the dark again the next morning, the weather was really no better with low cloud and drizzle but we decided to head off to the Oldfields Hut and assess conditions again. We cycled out from Old Snowy Campground at 7 am. Doug pushed his bike up the steep hill on Murray Gap FT to the saddle on the Gurrangorambla Range and plunged down the even steeper east side while I stashed my bicycle in the bush and walked. We met at the Oldfields Hut where it was damp and chilly. Deciding to meet again in two hours, Doug pedalled away while I walked along the FT into a biting wind.

Doug had a cold and damp 25 minute wait at the saddle where the track to Mount Murray leaves the FT but I did manage to arrive with about 20 minutes to spare from the two hour mark. The footpad to Mount Morgan is actually a very good trail all the way to about 1810 metres where it meets the north ridge. From there, the track is fainter as it bypasses some boulders on east side of Mount Morgan. The trees up here had been coated with long icicles which were dripping off as the day warmed. We scrambled up the slippery summit boulders in dense fog, snapped a picture or two and then retreated to the ridge and a slightly sheltered spot for a bit of food.

On the way down, we popped under the clouds and had some misty views of the Bimberi Range to the east and by the time I had walked back to Oldfields Hut, I could even see the tops of Bimberi Peak and Mount Murray. Doug beat me back to the Floatel by 1.5 hours!

Cave Creek

I feel a strange exhilaration riding my bicycle along Pockets Saddle FT in the falling rain. Doug has gone on ahead, while I cycled the extra half a kilometre along a side track to Pockets Hut. I am within six kilometres of Old Snowy Campground which makes the rain less of a problem. I’ll be back in the Floatel within an hour even if I am drenching wet. My legs are getting stiff from the cold, but with a goretex jacket and heavy toque (beanie) on, I am only a little chilled, not really cold.

A couple of hours earlier we had been walking east along Cave Creek towards Cooleman Falls. The track crosses the creek nine times and, while Doug had determinedly kept his shoes on almost the entire way, I had taken mine off and walked bare foot between creek crossings. Clark Gorge is a short, two kilometre canyon with limestone walls. About a kilometre before Cooleman Falls, the canyon opens out to a pretty river running beside eucalpytus forest lined banks.

On our way back from the falls to the campground, the rain started. Big heavy drops driven on the sound of thunder. We detoured up to the campground hoping to find a picnic shelter, but the only roof in the area was protecting the interpretive signage. After sheltering here for about 10 minutes, with thunder rumbling all around, the rain had stopped so we walked back down the Blue Waterholes FT to retrieve our bicycles. We had been going to walk the circuit loop around Nichols Gorge, a drier and smaller version of Clarke Gorge but the persistent thunder and threatening rain was a deterrent.

Instead of the whole loop walk we wandered up to Cooleman Cave where we walked through three of the chambers that did not require crawling through wet mud! Back at the bicycles, we started riding just as the rain started again. All the way back I felt as if I was being chased by Thor as the thunder rumbled on.

The Old Pull-Over

I’m always happy when I get to read something of Andy Kirkpatrick’s; he is incisive, original, fearless, and, most importantly, has a very advanced bullshit detector. It’s coincidental that this essay, on outdoor clothing, should come out, a couple of days after Doug and I returned from a trip to the Snowy (but not that snowy) Mountains. Everyday I had worn my old Patagonia insulated pull-over. An extremely simple piece of clothing: a layer of synthetic insulation sewn between two layers of light wind resistant nylon with a quarter zip at the neck. No hood, only one small breast pocket, elastic in the sleeves and bottom, and no sewn baffles. After 20 years, this piece of clothing is still going strong: sure it has a couple of patches and I avoid wearing it unprotected if pushing through trees and brush, but, if you consider both warmth for weight and longevity, this pull-over has beaten the odds.

Doug in his black pull-over

It’s impossible to buy a pull-over like this anymore. Although Patagonia has 95 women's jackets on the site, not one approximates this pull-over. The new way to make jackets is to sew at least several dozen baffles in so that the jacket is criss-crossed with seams and has a certain “puffer jacket” look. Never mind that all those seams allow cold air to leak into the jacket and warm air to leak out. You look sharp, and, apparently, even in the rarefied shopping space of Patagonia (which we used to call Patagucci because every clothing item was so expensive) looking sharp is more important than being functional.

The old sky blue pullover, PC: DB

My current pull-over, like the previous one before, was bought from a Patagonia outlet shop. There were two of these in North America, one in our home town of Nelson, BC, and one in Dillon, Montana. Both extremely unlikely places to find Patagucci outlets and I’m not sure how the outlets came to be in either location. In Nelson, the outlet was downstairs from the main clothing store which sold a variety of brands, and, on occasion, you could score a reasonable jacket or pair of climbing pants at half the regular price. I used to buy all my Goretex (or similar clone) jackets from there as the jackets wore out with great frequency and were expensive to replace. They never fit quite right because the items that went to the outlet store were “failed” Patagucci items. There was always something a little odd about the cut and fit, but not odd enough to put you off buying something that was at least solidly made from quality material.

A Patagucci jacket that never fit quite right,

PC: Bob

The Dillon outlet was much better than the Nelson one, despite the town being a third of the size. Dillon is home to the University of Montana Western and as such had a lot of young people amongst its small population. The outlet was always hopping and, in addition to having racks and racks and racks of clothing, at least 50% off again from the Canadian price (most things in the USA are 50% of the Canadian price which is why the USA has a more robust economy), the outlet did mail order so that while you were browsing the racks, the store attendants would be walking about the store gathering up items to ship off to far away locales. I’ve still got a pair of shorts and a tank top from the Dillon store, in addition to my pull-over.

Decked out in Patagucci outlet gear at EPC,

PC: DB

I got my first pull-over from the Nelson store – a sky blue one that was subsequently ripped apart on backcountry ski adventures in the Selkirk mountains – and my second, current model, from Dillon. When we were in Canada in 2019, I searched all the outdoor stores for a replacement pull-over for Doug whose black pull-over had worn threadbare but was absent all the rips that mine had accumulated. I could not find anything even close, and the prices were exorbitant. MEC was in the death throes of its eventual financial collapse at the time – driven, of course, by DEI and ESG and marketing executives fresh out of graduate school who did not know a tricam from an ice-screw – and jackets (there were no pull-overs) were upwards of $500 each. Marketing is expensive and the money to fund marketing must come from somewhere.

The toque (aka beanie) also from the outlet shop,

PC: DB

These days, I buy my outdoor clothing (with the exception of rain jackets) from Aldi (centre-aisle) or K-Mart. The items cost under $30 (although disturbingly, these are likely made in some off-shore sweat shop, but so are the more expensive models) and no worse and very often better than a name brand like Kathmandu. There’s a persistent myth in the outdoor space that high tech, high cost gear is needed for every adventure from a two hour trail run to a multi-day ski trip. It’s a myth as old as time. Pre-social media days, people would buy their high tech gear to wear to the local coffee shop, these days, the high-tech gear is more likely to appear in the latest carefully staged social media post. But it’s not gear that gets shit done outdoors, it’s guts and grit, and perseverance and the ability to tolerate discomfort if not outright pain. None of these can be bought off the rack at a shop but must be earned in the daily battle against inertia.

Mount Gladstone

Rising just over 100 metres above the surrounding plains, Mount Gladstone is better called Gladstone Hill, but that might belie how many times I had to get off the bike and push part of the up-track. The uphill section on Franks Loop was ride-able, but I had to get off and manhandle the bike a half dozen times on Longview, which I might rename “huck a lung.” It’s not overly steep; from base to summit, the elevation gain is only 175 metres, but the steep bits are very rocky and given my base level of skill, which is pretty much bump across while trying not to pedal strike or get bumped off, I had to push the bike more than normal (normal on my home trails is never!).

There are a couple of look-outs at the top, and nice views across the nearby flat farming land. There are no green trails off the summit, but the blue trail we rode (Gladiator) was not really technical and an easy ride. One of those times, however, when you get to the bottom shockingly fast and then have to confront the lung and leg blasting effort to get back to the top.

We did not go back to the top but lapped around Franks Loop and Easy Peasy, a green loop on the eastern flanks. If I did ride up again, I think I would throw ethics and aesthetics out and simply ride the sealed Mount Gladstone Road back to the top.

Three Days In April

My nephew, who has some passing interest in rock climbing (mostly in the climbing gym) occasionally drives south to stay with us for a couple of days. He is 32 and thus, of an age where young men should be challenged mentally and physically. This is basic evolutionary biology which exists – like binary sex - whether you believe in it or not. An increasing proportion of society would like to erase the precepts of science arguing instead that humans have no common genetic traits and are, as John Locke theorised in the middle 1600’s, merely blank slates (tabula rasa) upon which are imprinted societal constructs. That’s not turning out very well for either individuals or society but humans are mostly not rational, despite what we like to believe. All philosophical arguments aside, when my nephew comes to stay we plan activities, because young men like cattle dogs are best behaved when tired out at the end of an active day.

The first day we went rock climbing. Despite vowing every year to stay in shape for climbing, the end of summer finds me in perilously bad shape. Strength based skill sports get harder and harder each year, which is no doubt why there are so few older rock climbers around. Nevertheless, I try to – as RedGum would say - “keep the faith,” and keep climbing. We put Mitchell on a couple of projects at the crag. I’ve climbed one of them clean on top-rope but the second one I’ve never been able to do two or three crux moves that make up the middle part of the route.

There was zero chance of M sending either; the flexibility and strength of youth cannot make up for slip-shod footwork. I have one leg markedly weaker than the other despite years of trying to bring the weak leg up to the stronger leg. I’ve always assumed that it is this weak leg that makes the opening moves on this particular route feel desperately hard but watching M slip, slide, fall, and thrutch on the same moves I wondered if the weakness might be somewhere else up the kinetic chain, my fingers or core perhaps? There’s so much weakness when you are old that it’s best not to catalogue every imperfection.

On the second day we went sea kayaking. There was a big swell with a long period. The period was up to 16 seconds which is almost unheard of on the south coast of NSW where a long period is in the order of 10 or 11 seconds. Sixteen seconds is more typical of the Southern Ocean. In addition to the long period, the waves were very large. The wave buoy, which was three kilometres due east of the Tollgate Islands last time we found it, was reporting maximum swells to six metres with average swells in the three to four metre range. The swell was too big to get off our beach safely, in addition to breaking across the mouth of the bay, the water was surging across the parking lot so there was nowhere to launch a kayak anyway.

We trolleyed about five minutes further to a beach facing north into Batemans Bay where we were able to launch into Short Beach Creek and out to sea. I’ve wanted to paddle out Short Beach Creek for ages but you need either a lot of rain or a very high tide, preferably both. I had walked along to Observation Point in the morning to suss out the route to a couple of surf spots in the Bay that are good in big conditions. Batemans Bay is very shallow and in heavy swells there can be surf breaks all the way across the Bay from Square Head to Observation Point.

I had picked a line that went to the west of the westerly cardinal marker and then slightly northeast past another marker out into deeper water but when we launched, the change in tide height meant that the waves were breaking to the west of the cardinal marker but not to the east! We went out single file, me leading, M behind me, and Doug coming last. The swells were very big and rising steeply in the shallow water. At one point, I turned around and noted that M had drifted off my course and I yelled to get him back into position. It felt a bit like skiing a big avalanche slope: you’ll be quite safe as long as you stay off the convex roll!

We paddled right around the north side of Snapper Island keeping well off reefs and into the more sheltered waters to the west of Square Head. Cullendulla Creek runs out here and with a falling tide, you can get really long rides on friendly waves. The tide was rising so conditions were not as good as other times, but I notched up four kilometres riding in and then paddling back out again. M did quite well but lacked the pattern recognition to know when to paddle hard to stay in front of the wave. He only flipped once and managed to cowboy back in. We had a break on shore and then paddled over to Cullendulla where there were lots of families and few surfers. After trying a couple of spots, we found a nice metre high green wave that provided long rides in a spot where we were not in danger of wiping out any small children. It was lots of fun.

On the way back, we looked at paddling back the “inside route” which passes between Snapper Island and Observation Head. There are multiple reefs and sandbars through here where the water is less than two metres deep so it can be very dodgy, particularly with big sets coming in, to get through safely. In the end, we decided to go around. Getting caught by a bigger than average wave would be really nasty, these swells were very powerful! As we paddled into Caseys Beach and shelter from the dry reef, one set of 4 or 5 big swells stood up and curled slightly at the top. M who was dutifully following my line in, asked “is that going to break?” “No, no,” I said, more confidently than I felt, “just keep paddling steadily.”

PC: DB

The next day we went mountain biking. We had only one more goal to achieve, tire M out so that he was unable to ride up the hills. We had him falling while climbing, capsizing while kayaking, so this was all that remained! I honestly thought it would be harder than it was but, on the last uphill on the trails as I puffed along the trail coming DFL (dead fucking last) – my quads were starting to quiver – I found M pushing the bicycle up hill. “Time to go home,” I thought. “Our work here is done.” Good times all round and M was pretty well behaved!

Tomaree Coastal Walk

Apparently, the 20 minute walk to the top of Tomaree Summit Head is a Grade 5 walking track. That’s right, a paved trail with handrails and stairs, excessive signage and which takes about 20 minutes to walk comfortably is Grade5, or, descriptively “very experienced bushwalkers with specialised skills, including navigation and emergency first aid. Tracks are likely to be very rough, very steep and unmarked.”

Here’s what you should do if you are walking in the area, ignore the rating and stroll to the top. I walked up twice, once in teeming rain with no views and once the day after Doug and I walked the full Tomaree Coastal walk. On a very windy and rainy day, I walked from Fingal Bay north to Tomaree Head. The trail is a mix of beach and bush track and passes by Box, Wreck and Zenith Beaches, all little beaches tucked under short steep hills. Tomaree Head has a series of short trails, one to the top, and another that wraps around the north side. These can be linked together via rough bush tracks.

One day later, the weather was a lot better with only sporadic brief showers but gusty winds and large swell. I walked south from Fingal Bay while Doug drove to Birubi Point and walked north. The track is well marked and there are lots of side tracks to different rock platforms and lookouts: Fingal Head, Fingal Point, Snapper Point and Big Rocky. It’s worth walking out to all of these if you have the time and energy.

After Big Rocky there are two longer beaches, Samurai and One Mile Beach. Both were pounding with big surf as I walked along them. South of One Mile Beach is Morna Point with a very scenic slot that was awash with massive waves. A further half kilometre south is Boat Harbour which reminded me of paddling south west Tasmania: big swell and scary looking but also reasonably safe if you paddled out right through the middle. The coastline runs due west from Boat Harbour to Birubi Point. This is another interesting section of coast with rocky bays and headlands. The rocky coast abruptly comes to an end at Birubi Point and long Stockton Beach runs all the way to Newcastle.

Coming Through

It would be easy to dislike E-bike riders, too easy. E-bike riders seem to have an affinity for stopping on the trail, which necessitates analog riders either getting off their bikes to shuffle around or calling “coming through.” As soon as the E-bike riders see that the “coming through” bicyclist is a somewhat chubbier than she should be old lady, they feel compelled to spring immediately upon their bicycles, push the assist gear to high, and zoom up behind. What’s an analog rider to do then? Push on and have a cardiac or get off their bike – again – to let the E-riders past? If you are an analog rider all the old proverbs about rolling stones gathering no moss and “… trust inertia, it is the greatest force in the world,” are ineluctably true, we want to keep our bicycles moving; it is much easier if we do.

Paddling last Sunday, one of the other paddlers noted that he only used his E-bike assist on the hills, which is really the only time you are doing anything much on a bicycle unless you are riding steep trails where you must poise spring like over your pedals with your muscles in an isometric contraction. This is analogous to saying, “I only use a motor on my kayak when I am paddling.” The machine is doing the bulk of the work! Pedalling on the flats or downhill is basically just spinning your legs around and reminds me of the rather useless device someone once gave my mother (sold every year by Aldi) wherein an “exerciser” sits on the couch and spins their legs about. I’m not sure a more useless piece of equipment has ever been invented; but I could be wrong.

Also on my Sunday paddle we were talking about how tough people were in earlier generations. We all know this, no “studies” are required. Before the industrial revolution the bulk of people were tough as nails because they had to be to survive. I am in the same boat as everyone else: I’m not tough either. Every time I go out and do something difficult I have to remind myself it won’t kill me and will, in all likelihood, make me a better person. But it’s seldom I don’t have to remind myself of these two facts: “it won’t kill you, you’ll probably be better.”

If we learn to speak positively about risk and difficulty and hard work, and we make doing so a habit, it completely changes our relationship to same, and we become different, more capable people. Our opportunities and trajectory are forever altered, and we aren’t as inclined to settle for less than our greatest potential.  Mark Twight.  Poison.