Spring Training

In Alberta, the tanned face and neck with white body is called the “farmers tan.” I’ve come back from north Queensland with the equivalent: tanned fingers from the knuckles down and white hands from wearing paddling gloves for two weeks on the water. Driving through the small towns of country Australia you realise how disconnected from reality the Hannah Ferguson’s of the world are. Out in the dusty hot unforgiving Australian bush, it’s the men who drive the monster road trains, rustle the cattle, and extract the resources that allow the women (and men) of the far left to indulge their fantasies of men becoming women and Australia not generating income from resource extraction. All these towns, including much of our agricultural production would wither and die without resource extraction which is all that allows Cheek media to market mass produced tote bags and ball caps to fund endless quasi-moral proselytising while living comfortable lives in inner city Sydney advocating for the working class who they have never met and wouldn’t like if they had.

It is really another world in small town Australia. But, back in my world, it’s time to shuffle up the training program to get ready for my next big trip. I’ve got five months and my new schedule starts now. As my next long trip will involve big vertical gains, I’m back on one of the Training For The New Alpinism plans. Consistency and gradual increases in duration and intensity might test my patience but I’m an old lady with a history of tweaks and injuries and the most important goal of training is to be able to keep training.

Ignorance and Confidence

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Mark Twain.

Back in the days of industrial trail breaking in the West Kootenays, I had a good ski buddy who loved to break trail the way a Collie likes herding sheep. In other words, it was bred into him with strong legs, a big heart (in both a physical and spiritual sense) and a boundless work capacity. The only two things that held him back from the ranks of god-like trail breakers was a tendency to get geographically misplaced and a propensity to miss rather obvious terrain management cues. This meant he could break trail for hours at a time and build fabulous gradually ascending trails that even the most infirm in the group could follow but they might be up the guts of an avalanche gully with a looming cornice overhead and the entire group stacked up so that an avalanche would take everyone out all at the same time.

My strategy for managing this, because everyone hates a nag even if they pretend to be OK with you blowing the whistle for the 45^th time on a three hour sea kayak tour, was to ignore any and all crazy foibles unless there was identifiable risk. Not imaginary discomfort from your “lived experience” but actual risk to the ski party, such as ascending steep convex terrain when shallow angle terrain was available, or going 180 degrees in the wrong direction (sometimes both at the same time).

This remains where I fall on the continuum of legitimate criticisms on shared trips. If I’ve made poor decisions such that I have endangered people, you should definitely raise the issue with me. We may not reach agreement, as people often choose a risky option over a safe one because we value outcomes and experience differently. But, if my decision is based on some kind of hare-brained over-confidence and encompasses a paternalistic (or maternalistic) “I will take responsibility for X,” attitude – especially where X is too inexperienced or inept to make a rational judgement and is simply trusting me (or you) blindly – those decisions are absolutely fair game for an open and reasoned discussion (or debrief, as the terminology runs). If I am angry about this, I am a delusional fool and you are right to mistrust me until I prove otherwise.

PC: Mark P

This system can work, although it may be uncomfortable to confront your own errors of judgement or lack of skill. What doesn’t work is pretending to forget (even if you do forgive) dozens of trips where poor judgement had real consequences. Medical emergencies aside, if you need professional rescue multiple times in your outdoor adventure career, you have a judgement problem. It was Mark Twain, the famous satirist and novelist, who wrote “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgement.” Twain, of course, wrote from his own experience of declaring bankruptcy in 1894 after a series of bad investments. By 1898 however, Twain through hard work, help from friends and associates, and not making the same mistakes multiple times, had paid his debts off and amassed a significant estate. Twain died a wealthy man. If the “first casualty of war is truth,” trust is the first thing lost when arrogance and hubris prevents accurate assessments of decision errors.

Connections

The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun. Jeff Lowe.

This year’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering is out at a record 144 pages as climbing accident reporting rises again. Pete Takeda who edits the annual volume speaks about the 2026 issue on the American Alpine Club podcast and reports that there has been an increase in top-rope soloing accidents. When I first started climbing (the dark ages), rope soloing (either top rope or lead) was virtually unknown and, to this day, I’ve only ever come across one person engaged in top-rope solo climbing at a crag in Castlegar, B.C. The bloke was climbing a 5.10 or 5.11 crack climb and all I really remember is that he had a boom box (also a thing from the dark ages) blasting (at a sensitive residential crag) and the whole procedure from set up to climb appeared to take an inordinate amount of time.

H. Mutch photo

The rise in rope soloing is perplexing given that there are more people climbing today than ever before in history and yet, apparently people are having trouble finding partners. I have to wonder if this reveals something about our culture, which is both increasingly individualistic and increasingly divided along identity lines. If you’ll only climb with women, or non-binary people (whatever that is), or black, brown or yellow people you might start to run short of climbing partners.

Alternatively, it could be social media culture. In an age when everyone is “projecting” it’s gotta be like solving the middle east crisis to find a partner who wants to project your project, on the day, time, humidity level and lunar cycle that your training schedule predicts you’ll be peaking to send the project and clip the chains. While I understand the satisfaction of finally accomplishing something you have worked hard for, I wonder if we have lost something ineffable about climbing when every midwit climber believes the most important thing is working their project not having a good time with their climbing buddies.

Today I paddled out to the Tollgate Islands with some friends. It was so nice to talk with people you haven’t seen for a while, to hear how their lives and the lives of their families are going, to share a little bit in their joys and adventures, and to remember that we are connected by more than some filaments of nylon rope, or at least we should be.

Tempo Paddling

Over the last couple of days the swell dropped precipitously until the HS (the average of the highest one third of waves during the observation period – generally the last 20 minutes) was down to only 0.6 metres with a HMax (the highest wave in the observation period) was only about 1.3 metres. Those waves were still packing a punch though with a 15 second wave period. That’s a wave period you associate with Tasmania or South Australia not the south coast of NSW.

PC: DB

At the Tollgate Islands, there were two very relaxed seals hanging off the east side of the south island but no sign of the bigger male I had seen a couple of weeks ago. As we paddled through the gap between the two islands and through various slots and gauntlets on the east side we noted an off-shore wind increasing. By the time we lapped around the north end of the north island, the WNW wind was about 15 knots and it was a cold and wet paddle (at least on one side of our bodies) down to Black Rock where the west side was uncharacteristically calm compared to the east side.

PC: DB

After that we nipped into the headland that bounds Mosquito Bay and headed back home. It was meant to be a “tempo” paddle for me and I had been hoping to keep the pace between 7 and 8 kilometres an hour for the full distance but the wind played a bit of havoc with that. The only other occurrence of note was that we paddled right through the gap between the two rocks that form the bommie off Mosquito Bay. This reef/bommie almost always breaks but today it was calm enough that with a bit of timing, you could pretty much paddle right across!

Letting Go

Never mistake anger for fear. Andy Kirkpatrick.

It’s a new month which means a change in my strength training programme. I’ve gone back to April’s schedule which is “compound burner sets” with a lower body/upper body split. I like this schedule best because, although I am stiff and sore the day after training, I can fool myself that I get an extra day of recovery before training again because my lower body rests (sort of) while I train upper body.

Compound burner sets are an interesting way to train. You do 6 to 12 repetitions of a compound movement (for example weighted back squats) and then you follow immediately on with 15 to 25 repetitions of an isolation exercise for the primary muscle group you worked (something like leg extensions or lean backs if you did squats as your compound move). After a couple of minutes rest (I generally do a bit of stretching) you rotate through this couplet three or four more times. The day after, you will discover why this is aptly called a “burner set.” Predictably, I woke up this morning with that characteristic “day after leg day feeling.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the uncomfortable conversation I had the other day, which was a follow up to a disagreement that happened on a sea kayaking trip. For over 18 months I’ve thought that if I did two very, very minor things differently I could have prevented what happened. Today, as I woke to the utter predictability of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) I finally realised that the blow up was just as inevitable. The timing could be modified, but the festering resentment was never going to go away. I could have prostrated myself in a replica of Dandavat Parikrama as the Hindu pilgrims do and nothing would have changed. At heart, I am a fixer, and it drives me a bit nuts that I can’t fix this, but sometimes the fix is simply to let something go.

Two Paddling Days

“I don’t want any more bump,” said Doug when I suggested lapping around the east side of the Tollgate Islands on our way back from Flat Rock Island. Fair enough, it was a bumpy day after a storm blew through the day before so even though there was no wind to speak off, the sea was lumpy and the swell pumping with a period of over 10 seconds. I did some sprint intervals on the way back during which my speed bumped up to 10 kilometres/hour. Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could paddle at 10 kilometres/hour for over about 25 seconds!

On Tuesday, I paddled with Robbie and Rae from Kioloa north to Termeil Beach (and back) where it was easy to land despite the beach facing due east. The swell was small, the wind light from the northwest. Robbie and Rae are “straight liners.” We were over half a kilometre off-shore even though there was very little swell. Unlike today, which was cloudy, it was sunny on Tuesday and warm in the sun.

Training to Get Weaker

Find the problem.  Fix the problem.  Mark Twight. 

I want to have a system whereby you have to prove your age to take up swimming as your main training modality. The system will be similar to the “you have to be this tall to ride,” but instead, of proving height, the aspiring swimmer will have to prove they are under 50. I understand this is a heretical view given that old people gravitate to swimming like politicians to the public tax trough, but there are simply too many problems with using swimming as your main training modality for us to allow old people to make this choice. Australia loves stateism so I expect that this will be widely endorsed by the usual people who like inventing rules for people to obey and elaborate methods of enforcing those rules.

The details need to be hashed out but the benefits of removing swimming as a training modality will be enormous. Below is a partial list of those benefits to old people:

• Your own body weight will have to be carried while you are training. Currently, we have deconditioned old people training without even the requirement to support their bodies. In other words, they are training like astronauts without having the medical team around them to facilitate the rebuilding of bones and muscles after their return from space.

• Training will be done under conditions where you can fall down. This trains balance and balance is important for all of daily life. Mark Rippetoe has written widely on this.

• There will be bone deformation and stress which is necessary to prevent bone loss associated with ageing.

• The training will include walking or running over uneven and rough ground. This trains the ability to recover rapidly from everyday stumbles thus preventing falls and fractures.

• Progressive resistance can be added as the trainee gains strength thus ensuring they continue to gain strength instead of losing muscle and conditioning as happens with swimmers.

• Training will be done in conditions which more closely approximate daily life. No-one swims around the grocery store or to the doctors office.

• Overhead lifts, such as presses, maintain the ability to work overhead in daily life. This is important for changing lightbulbs, lifting things onto high shelves, and also for maintaining shoulder health and mobility.

• Lifting weight off the ground (as in deadlifts) maintains the ability to lift things off the ground and move things around in daily life.

• Exercises such as loaded carries work innumerable large and small muscles as well as the coordination of those muscles for activities that are important in daily life.

This is just a partial list, there are many more benefits to training such that your body gets stronger instead of weaker. I find myself cringing a little inside whenever I hear the “but I’ve taken up swimming,” from friends and acquaintances. Sometimes this is in response to a tweak or injury, but increasingly, older people are taking up swimming because training in other ways (even modalities as simple as walking) is uncomfortably challenging. Training is supposed to be challenging; it is the only way to build capacity. Training appropriately is the ultimate delayed gratification test. The trainee is uncomfortable in moment and in the immediate future, but is building up capacity for the future.

Swimming is nice for leisure, recreation or even as a social activity, but if you are resorting to swimming for training you are training to get weaker.