Freedom is Hard Work

It’s always good and bad, yin and yang, dark and light, left and right. There are lots of families out on the mountain bike trails these days with the warm, dry weather and school holidays in the final week, and that is fantastic but it’s also depressing because the responsible adults are shuttling their kids in vehicles to avoid the uphill ride which is under 100 vertical metres in most instances. Yeah, kids, who should be fit and active are learning to use fossil fuel powered machines to avoid discomfit. We all know this won’t end well, or perhaps we don’t. Increasingly, we are either removed from the consequences of our actions or we pretend that we bear no responsibility.

The morning after a night on a mountain

Years ago (2010), late afternoon in early winter when the days are as short as they can be, I jumped into a helicopter with my ski pack to fly into the southern Selkirk Mountains because a snowmobiler had fallen with snowmobile into an abandoned mine shaft. It was early December so the snow-pack was less consolidated than it would be in late winter or early spring and by 4:30 pm it would be dark. I took my skis because I knew the area (the only person in the group who did) having skied in there a few times previously, and knew that if the rescue were delayed and the helicopter could not retrieve us, I could slap my skis on and be out at the road in two or three hours. I had previously spent a winter night with a dead body on a ridge in the middle of winter after a search for a crashed light aircraft. Virtually no-one survives a light aircraft crash particularly in deep forest as the trees shear the wings off the plane as it falls through the forest. It had been a long, cold night and not one I wanted to repeat if it wasn’t necessary.

My compatriots on the search team were, as one, dismissive of me taking skis, and, tried mighty hard to discourage me. Until, of course, the helicopter set us down in the winter snow-pack where the foot penetration was near mid thigh deep and my skis were invaluable for packing down a path for us all to use to access the rescue site. By the time we had the injured snow-mobiler on the surface, it was too late for a helicopter retrieval, and we ended up being extracted by snowmobile well after dark. I could have skied out, but the snowmobile was faster. I’ll never forget how free and confident I felt knowing that I could, under my own power and responsible for and to no-one get myself out of the backcountry and home to safety and comfort.

Freedom it turns out is not free. You have to work for it every day by keeping your mind and body in a place where you can prevail against unexpected conditions. It’s a helluva lot easier to ride up a short hill than it is to prevail in dark, dangerous and desperate times so you may as well get as much practice in on easy days as you can.

The Wave Rider Buoy (again)

That which we avoid gets nastier. Will Gadd.

Friday was sunny and I paddled down to Guerilla Bay to meet some kayaking friends. There were a couple of whales in the shallow bay between Pretty Point and Jimmies Island when I went past, but, by the time we were back out to sea, the whales had moved on. My friends went south, while I went back north, paddling home into a light headwind. South would have been a 40 kilometre day for me. Those will come soon enough this summer!

On Saturday we went rock climbing. It may be the tick situation (that’s what Doug thinks) but my head is just not in rock climbing mode these days. I am distracted and it’s difficult to try hard. I am such a useless climber I have to try hard all the time. On Thursday, Doug had called me and let me know that his riding partner had picked up a tick on the mountain bike trails, so on both my climbing day (Saturday) and my mountain biking day (Thursday), I went out in my covering of full body 80% Deet and permethrine treated clothing. I checked frequently for ticks, and my clothes went into the dryer when I got home.

The events surrounding my near death experiences with ticks still flash into my mind a lot, and I take precautions virtually every day of my life now. Getting bitten by a tick in the house means I can never let my guard down. But I do not want to become part of the “stress injured”; the walking not wounded people whose identity is permanent victim status. This is one of the other things we used to know implicitly but forgot in the fourth great awokening, no good comes from believing yourself a victim.

Today we paddled out to the Batemans Bay Wave Rider Buoy. Paddling directly out to sea for 10 kilometres I realised how long it has been since I have done this kind of paddling. Nothing much to look at but the wobbly horizon, the weird and slightly unsettling experience of leaving land far behind as we paddle on a compass bearing, the different environment that is encountered far off-shore: shearwaters wheeling overhead, schools of fish jumping, even a few whales. Our route was pretty direct, just veering to the south when we were within half a kilometre of the buoy and Doug had spotted the ragged black flag.

The buoy looks like it’s been through a few storms, but then again, haven’t we all.

The Last Week of September: Paddling, Hiking, Biking, Skiing

Sunday was, of course, paddle day. Conditions were very good with a modest swell and light winds. I probably would have picked a different beach to launch from if I had known there would be six paddlers, but we went from our home bay across to North Head and up the Murramarang Coast to Dark Beach. It was possible to paddle into the cave if you were careful.

On Thursday, I went out to get some elevation training on the legs. What you really want is a very steep climb of about a thousand metres or, at least 800 metres over a short distance. That’s very tough here on the coast without driving a long way. West of the coast, there are some hills that reach almost 700 metres, but the starting elevation is 100 metres, the drive takes an hour each way, and the fire trails are less steep than ideal. When I was training for Canada in 2019, I had worked out the drive time to elevation gain per metre ratio for a variety of hill climbs within an hours drive! Bolaro Mountain Fire Trail, which is only about half an hour from home, seems to work reasonably well for limited driving. You can go either south to Bolaro or north to the communication towers on Erics Ridge, and I got 740 metres of gain out of that.

On Friday, with stiff legs, I got on the mountain bike and rode around the trails. My lucky day in that I did not encounter any E-bikes! Saturday, we headed off to the Snowy Mountains and stopped at Molongolo Gorge Reserve to walk the trail along Molongolo Creek on the way. A pretty little river running in a steep sided canyon with a half dozen small cascades along its length.

Sunday, of course, was skiing. From Guthega Pondage, we skied up the long gentle south ridge that eventually leads up to the Rolling Grounds. The only walking required was the 1.3 kilometres down the pondage road, across the dam wall, and up the old road on the north side of the Snowy River. There was enough snow to put skis on above the Snowy River and, by skiing to one side or other of the higher ridge, we skied all the way to Consett Stephen Pass and up the ridge north of Mount Tate. There were a number of skiers heading up the ridge but they all seemed to turn back after a couple of hundred metres. We had one run down into Falls Creek which was pleasant yet short, but otherwise, the day was trundling along on the low angle slopes that characterise the flattest continent on the planet.

Adapting Up: Mount Tate

With skis and boots on our packs, we are walking down the gravel road from Guthega ski area to the dam wall across Guthega Pondage. The wind is draining down the Snowy River valley and, although I have three layers on, I feel a bit chilled. I’m not adapted to these temperatures, even though it is probably not even below zero. We do adapt. When I lived in Calgary, Alberta, I rode my bicycle to work right through the dead of winter on days when the northerly artic air blew down and it was 20 below zero. I wore a strikingly similar amount of clothing. Long underwear, a fleece jumper, and a lined fleece jacket that I made myself, tights on my legs and goretex pants if it was really cold. It was cold and dark in mid winter, the days barely seven hours long, so I left by headlamp, but I adapted, as we all adapt.

Across the dam wall, we pick up a faint foot pad that runs up the east side of the Guthega River to a funny metal bridge on logs. I often expect this bridge to be underwater, but it never is, the run-off never the full spate that Canadian mountain streams grow to in spring. But the foot pad is wet and swampy and I am trying to keep my feet in running shoes with more holes than shoe dry. When my foot slips off a tussock and one foot plunges into the mud and the other leg folds under wetting my trousers to the knee, I give up, and splash through the rest of the puddles to the bridge.

Across the bridge, a bit of bashing through thick shrubs and 10 or so metres of elevation gain and we are at a tongue of snow that will take us all the way up to Tate East Ridge 300 metres above. At ridge top, we weave together patches of snow, but Gills Knobs is stubbornly snow free and we have to carry skis a distance until we can join together patches of snow that lead to a low angle hanging valley, the east tributary of Pounds Creek where snow lies in deep drifts and we can skin all the way to Mount Tate, an unassuming pile of rocks (like all the mountains here about).

It’s perfect spring corn snow on the way down, and after descending 170 metres into the valley, we skin back up to the ridge of Mount Tate for another short run down. Then it’s back past Gills Knobs for a second lunch behind boulders on Tate East Ridge and a delightful 300 metre run down to the Guthega River. All but the last 50 metres or so delightful corn snow. Boots off, sneakers on, skis and boots on packs and back across the little bridge, splashing carelessly through the puddles on the foot pad now, up to the car park, and coffee brewed fresh from our van (The Floatel).

We adapt but we can choose where we adapt up, or adapt down. My favourite, most inspiring story of adapting up is Mark Twight on the VK Run the Rut course in Montana. A VK is a 1000 metre (vertical kilometre) timed hike, usually over a short distance (in this case 4 km) for maximum steepness. In 2025, with two artificial hips, a fused ankle, and floating fibula (also known as missing a piece of bone), Twight completed the VK in just over one hour. That’s adapting up.

The Failure of Modern Medicine

Off I went to the GP (general practitioner) this morning for a prescription for some more epinephrine for my anaphylactic allergy to ticks, wasps, bees, and hornets. While there, I was offered three different screening tests (HPV, cholesterol, bowel cancer) and two different vaccines (including one for tetanus although Australia recorded only three cases of tetanus in 2023). I am actually mildly relieved that I was only offered two unnecessary “vaccines” as last time I went I was offered three!

What I wasn’t offered is more important than what I was offered. Not one word of advice was given about how to avoid ticks, how to remove ticks, how to treat tick bites or anything remotely connected with the reason I was attending the physician in the first place. I was also not given any counselling on what to do should I collapse and fall into a coma again, or how I might educate people with me to deal with my issue should I become incapable. In fact, I got nothing useful apart from a prescription. And, even that was not very useful because our government bureaucracy makes it impossible for any physician to give me a refill for an epi-pen. So, I got the usual prescription for two epi-pens, no refills.

Consider this, I used three epi-pens in one week a couple of weeks ago, and, it took me three weeks after that to get a doctors appointment to obtain a new prescription, and the government will only issue me two epi-pens at any one time. So I could literally die before I get a new prescription for an epi-pen, but I can also get a completely unnecessary vaccination for tetanus, something I have about a one in ten thousand squillion chance of contracting and an even smaller chance of dying from.

And they call us cookers.

Tin Tin Goes Climbing

Well, it was a week, but, I survived. After two epi-pens and a dose of antihistamine on Friday night, I was pretty shot on Saturday so all the exercise I did was my, now familiar, walk to the chemist for some more epi-pens! Sunday was paddle day, and we were a party of four this week, with Wildey back from the wilds. We lapped out to the Tollgate Islands then headed north to Judges Beach and back via Snapper Island. Robbie was disappointed that we were under 20 kilometres (just shy of 18 kilometres) and it’s testament to my poor recovery that I didn’t even care that we hadn’t hit 20 kilometres.

On Tuesday, I dressed as Tin Tin and walked into the crag to go rock climbing. My tick protection was a full body coating of 80% Deet (very oily smelly stuff), my Tin Tin garb which is a long sleeved shirt and long pants tucked into socks all treated with Permethrin – including my back pack. We didn’t get any ticks but it was so windy we left early. Doug and I had at least 100 phantom ticks but no real ones.

Fun Times on a Friday Night

I have just got the ingredients for dinner out of the fridge and I notice a tickle on my neck, the opposite side to the tick bite that resulted in anaphylaxis. I’m in the house, I’ve had a hot shower, it simply cannot be a tick, except it is a tick.

Two epi-pens later and I’m in the ambulance back to the hospital.