It's Not Unusual

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone.

Les Reed and Gordon Mills

Only me for the Sunday paddle this week, which, if I could be pompous enough to use a double negative is not uncommon. Another way of saying this is it’s pretty common. Sometimes, not uncommonly - in other words, often - I wonder why I bother. I’ve only got 13 people on the list, and most of these are out virtually all the time due to a mix of feeling unfit, suffering illness or injury, away somewhere else, or just plain can’t be arsed. On average, per person attendance is actually zero trips, which really is an achievement on my part!  I don't think many people can claim that distinction.  

I need new paddle partners, something that is quite obvious from the previous paragraph, so I keep going in the deluded hope that someone young and keen will appear; but, at 63, after over four decades of adventuring, I feel like I have rarely in that 45 years NOT had trouble finding partners. It’s a very common theme among folks who like doing outdoor activities. Partners are hard to find. Which is a bit counter-intuitive when I scroll my Instadrivel of Facepalm feed which is full of shiny, happy people letting me know what a bad arse they are.

If I was going to be solo, the thing to do was obviously to try to crank out the requisite kilometres (generally 20) as fast as possible. That’s a way to make something more interesting and challenging. The Sunday paddles are generally conducted at a fairly lackadaisical pace and take a lot more time than I would allocate were I alone, so when I am alone, I always think about seeing how fast I can go.

My speed log (from Garmin) shows the effect of wind and swell. Around 8 kilometres/hour over to Yellow Rocks in calm conditions then a gradually declining speed which was initially due to lumpy seas and swell heading to the Tollgate Islands but soon enough became the product of paddling into both a headwind and a swell as I went south to Black Rock.

People often think paddling into the wind is the hard part, and it is if you are slow. There’s been more than one Sunday paddle which has ended in a tow because someone is paddling way too slowly to make headway in the wind, but beginners find downwind and down-swell conditions much more challenging. Paddling into the wind, the bow is well anchored and if you can just keep plugging along, the kayak feels very stable. Paddling downwind and down-swell beginners can quickly become very unstable. It helps to keep the kayak moving, catching waves is way easier – apart from the power and cardiovascular output required to paddle fast enough to catch the waves – than wallowing in every wave trough.

I was working to try and catch waves on the way back but they were a couple of kilometres an hour too fast for me to easily get on and when on, I had to keep paddling hard to stay out front. By the time I got to 16 kilometres, I was actually feeling a bit whipped from sprinting! The last kilometre was a little cool down around to the next beach and back at a very leisurely 6 kilometres/hour pace.

Life is Good

The fine weather during April has slid into equally good weather in May, and, after six weeks of solid training all I can think about is doing things instead of merely preparing to do things. On Saturday we went rock climbing in summer weather – warm and a bit sticky, especially for May. Sunday, Splashalot emerged on the promise of “interesting conditions” for my regular Sunday sea kayak but the strong wind never eventuated so instead of a downwind paddle with a solid easterly swell, we went to catch some waves on the Batemans Bay bar. The swell had popped up to an average of two metres with much bigger sets coming through which makes for good waves on the bar. Nick’s Big Foot (the footplate installed in Expedition Kayaks plumb bow kayaks) came adrift so he finished up the rides without any ability to sit himself firmly in the kayak.

Monday I headed out for a rip around the Mogo trails on my mountain bike. There was a misty drizzle as I rode to the trail-head which thickened a bit and became outright rain down at the Botanic Gardens so I cycled home in the rain cutting the ride short as all I had was a light and very worn out wind-break.

Tuesday and Wednesday we went up to Tianjara Falls to climb. The weather was perfect, some sun on the crags around the middle of the day, not too cold, and no westerly wind slamming against the cliffs. I usually plan our climbing trips up on the Braidwood Road for later in the year because early season we are always so out of rock climbing shape, particularly if it’s been a hot summer or we have been off on a big sea kayaking trip over the summer. But this year, we went early. Half to escape the ticks that infest the coastal areas and half because it always gets hard later in the year to find a few consecutive days that are warm enough and without the incessant winter westerlies.

The professional climbers love cold conditions to increase friction, but Doug and I are old, and all the cold does is prevent us from ever warming and limbering up. The climbs feel much harder than they should when that westerly blows and you are deep in shade the entire day. The Floatel, as we call our van, was fantastic. We parked in a bit of state forest and had a quiet camp with a view to the ocean and a big full moon overhead. I walked about in the woods as the sun set, happy that I can do that again without having to worry about aggravating any injuries. Life is good.

Autumn Training Days

We have had fantastic weather this autumn – clear days, light winds, cool mornings, sunny days – it reminds me a lot of Canada in the fall (the Canadian word for autumn) when the air was so crisp and clear that if you stood on a mountain top you felt you could touch the sun. It feels almost a waste to spend the month of April training strength four times a week, doing my physiotherapy exercises seven days a week, and just gradually creeping up my aerobic activity, but I am glad I did. I am feeling way stronger than on my return from Tasmania and my painful hip has all but resolved.

It’s really easy to fall into the trap of training and somehow forget that all the training is meant to support performance. Gym numbers, even for a person like me who has been training for decades, creep up, outdoor performance is much harder to massage towards improvement because it involves more than just moving heavy things around. Proprioception, skill acquisition and retention, body control, flexibility, strength, power, endurance, mind control, these all influence actual performance. And, of course, learning is reinforced by failure. No-one gets any better at anything if they don’t risk failure. Failure in the gym can be either avoided or controlled. Failure in the natural world is much less malleable. Kayaks flip, climbers fall off, mountain bikes crash. But what is this one life for if not to find out what you can do when you try?

Short and Sweet: A Paddling Story

I got foot, hand and mouth disease on a recent visit to Sydney so when not a single club member signed up for my three day paddle trip over Anzac weekend I actually felt a bit of relief. Still, one ex-club member wanted to paddle so I pivoted to a two day non-club trip over Sunday and Monday paddling only a short distance each day but camping overnight. Pivoting is the new thing that people talk about as if it is some kind of super-power which distinguishes you from the masses, but humans have always adapted; if we couldn’t change strategy we would have lost the evolutionary lottery long ago.

Short paddles for overnight camping aren’t really my thing, neither are short bush-walks, bike packs to camp or carrying mounds of trad gear to climb a 10 metre route in the middle of nowhere. Even when I was younger and didn’t get as fatigued carrying heavy packs, I couldn’t see the point of lugging all the extra weight about to do something over two days that you could do in one. Plus, there is all the extra time packing and unpacking, and, when sea kayaking, everything is wet and has to be dried out afterwards. Doug and I took two tents because of my highly contagious viral illness so I had two tents to put up and dry when we got back home instead of one. Somehow, every dry bag ended up wet as did both our sleeping bags. Heavy dew by the ocean I assume.

The weather and sea conditions were forecast to be excellent and I had a quiet beach in mind for a camp, we would paddle with a friend we hadn’t seen for a long time and I wasn’t really up to much heavy training anyway so I set off with a very positive attitude.

We had a lazy paddle south in surprisingly bumpy conditions given there was barely any wind and the swell was only about a metre. Strong winds had been forecast off-shore and these can cause lots of rebound when they blow from the east so it could have been that, or the East Australian Current could have been setting up an eddy along the coastal fringe. When we turned the corner at the prominent point to the south the sea state immediately calmed. There were big schools of fish everywhere but frustratingly as soon as you approached they flashed off into the deeper water.

Our little beach had a sheltered easy landing and it was really nice to brew up a nice hot cup of tea and put dry clothes on. The autumn sun set early over the high cliff behind us and the quiet beach became even quieter as full darkness set in.

I won’t lie, I was thinking about my comfortable bed at home but had a reasonable sleep in my very damp tent although I was a wee bit chilly in the early hours. At dawn, I crawled out and had a walk in either direction to warm up. I’ve been to this beach before but had not appreciated how good the rock platforms book-ending the beach are. Lots of deep rock pools with clear water, fish and crabs, along with tunnels through the platform where the water surges in and out.

Doug and I had two big jugs of coffee which I enjoyed tremendously despite my mouth sores and then we packed up and headed off. I was expecting calmer conditions and was not disappointed. There was no wind, the swell had eased slightly and all the rebound and clapotis from the day before was gone. We passed big schools of fish in multiple places, watched the seals lying lazily in the sun or semi-sleeping in the water, and even had some dolphins surface right beside the kayaks as we headed north. It was one of those mornings where it would be hard to think of a better place to be.

It was Anzac Day weekend so it is important to spare some space in our heads to remember the brave men and women who have served our country and continue to serve in our armed forces. There is a lot of chatter these days about Kings (who are democratically elected whether you like them or not), Fascism and Hitler, yet few of us in the developed west now have to experience the horror of war. Like everything else, we have grown accustomed to outsourcing difficulty and danger to other people while we proselytise from behind keyboards. But we should never forget that real men and women, mostly young, made tremendous sacrifices so that we could live as free people in a free land. Lest we forget.

Images by Doug.

Back to the Longhouse

This came across my Instagram account this morning, an analysis of a recent climbing fatality in Idaho’s City of Rock National Reserve. It is a brief, concise and respectful (if that is important to you) synthesis of the incident with three bullet points at the end which are all easily implemented and would have prevented the death of a very young man.

Doug leading Corny Hesitation, City of Rock

It is a stark contrast to the endless validation of feelings that define the Rescued Podcast. True, no-ones “lived experience” is substantiated, but also, the recommendations, if followed, would prevent someone’s lived experience from becoming a death experience. In the choice between life and death, most normal people choose life. The Longhouse does not have to imbue our entire existence, nor should it. The idea that we have to unquestioningly swallow down any and all instances of foolish behaviour is a destructive force which perpetuates human ignorance and even misery. Ironically, the greatest proponents are women who rage against the patriarchy while not seeming to recognise that it is oppressive to deny people the ability to learn from their mistakes and develop true resilience.

Cruel Shoes, City of Rock

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should add that Doug and I once an adventure trying to abseil down a multi-pitch route in the City of Rock with a "short" 60 metre rope.  Luckily, our feelings didn't matter and we let logic guide our decisions.  

Getting Better

It’s build back season. Trying to regain some muscle after two months in Tasmania engaged in predominantly catabolic endurance activities with the added complication of a hip/leg injury (likely a tendinopathy). Tendons are touchy things, particularly in post-menopausal women, and poorly understood by the lay public (maybe even some medical people). Tendons take much, much longer to adapt to load than muscles and, when injured, similarly extended time periods to heal. And, you have to load tendons to repair them. The old RICE format (rest, ice, compress, elevate) does nothing for tendons and anti-inflammatories, like ibuprofen similarly delay recovery. It’s frustrating because your muscles and aerobic system are fit enough to increase volume but your tendons are not.

It is hard to go wrong by applying the old 10% rule which, as every endurance junkie knows, is only increase volume by 10% each week. This might be too little because the walking I am doing now is far easier than the walking I was doing in Tasmania, but, the other thing all endurance junkies know is it’s better to be slightly under-trained than over-trained.

I’m on a new strength program which will, like all strength programs change every three to six weeks and it is a bit different to any I have done before and comes from the book The Strong System. Technically, it’s a book for men and women, but it’s pretty clear that Cori Lefkowith, the author, primarily writes for and trains women. This is not a bad thing as women have a vastly different hormonal profile to men and older women require different stimulus to build muscle.

And, we went rock climbing for my birthday trip. I try to always do a birthday trip. In years past, I’ve tried to make these trips a bit out of the normal, but, given we haven’t climbed since mid-December climbing was out of the normal. Of all the activities I do that require building back, rock climbing is the hardest. And, this year, I vacillated. Maybe this would be the year I let climbing go. There is no gym nearby (it’s two hours to the nearest climbing gym at Nowra and it’s a bouldering gym which means volumes and jumps and is not really much like the climbing I do outside), and, I’m so restricted where and when I can climb with my tick allergies. My favourite close by area is infested with ticks so that is off the cards. Other areas require longer drives and I’m only guessing are safe from ticks based on never having got a tick there in the past.

Past behaviour might be the best predictor of future behaviour but it’s not the best predictor of ticks because Doug got a tick yesterday when we were out climbing. First time ever for that location. I had taken my usual precautions – full body rub down with 80% Deet (delightful), light coloured long sleeves and long pants with pants tucked into socks and all clothing and pack treated with permethrine. Frequent tick checks, shoes and socks back on between climbs. I’m not sure whether Doug was just unlucky or my precautions are working. Obviously, putting aside Doug’s bad luck, the latter would be the best option for me.

Anyway, as I was mulling over my enthusiasm level for the long road back to rock climbing fitness (I am doing some short sessions on my home wall), this post arrived from one of the substacks I follow. Hopefully you can read it without being subscribed (I only have a free subscription and I can read it). There are a lot of good ideas in here, especially if you are not sure how to train for being a functional human and more particularly, a functional old human. But for me, as I wavered on the edge of “perhaps I’ll let climbing go,” I read this section:

Rock Climbing: Still the “best” Thing I Do. I’m not trying to send hard routes.¹ I’m there for what climbing does that nothing else fully replicates: full-body tension and coordination, grip strength under fatigue, dynamic weight shifts, problem-solving in three dimensions, proprioceptive demands on surfaces that are irregular and unpredictable.

Life is about doing things you don’t necessarily want to do, or things that you find hard to do, but which ultimately lead to something you want very badly. Two months of injury where I could hardly sit, stand or lie comfortably. Two months of not being my most happily active. Two months of nagging discomfit and pain. After that, I realised that I am prepared to take the first few faltering steps along the road to building back climbing fitness. The first pitch of the day was not good, but the later pitches got better, and, no matter where you start, you can always get better.

1I can’t send hard routes!

The Needles and Sentinel Ridge

Here are two final bushwalks from Tasmania, both in the southwest of the state. The Needles trail leaves from the high point of the Gordon River Road and quickly climbs up to a 900 metre saddle. The 1032 metre high point is a short jaunt to the west from there. The trail is good and from what we saw popular. We didn’t have much of a view as the cloud which was sitting on the top of the ridge slowly descended as we ascended.

Next is Sentinel where we had marginally better weather, the cloud bases were a little higher. The topographic map marks Wedge River picnic ground which has fallen into disrepair and had the toilets removed. The short access road has some deep potholes and is overhung with vegetation but is still passable.

From the picnic area, you look straight at the north face of Sentinel Ridge which looks very steep because it is very steep. Improbably, the track goes right up the face beside a big buttress which sports the 300 metre traditional climbing route, Moonlight Buttress. The steepest part of the walk ends at a small saddle between an outlier peak to the north and the main Sentinel Range which runs roughly west to east. The trail continues south below a small high point and then along a narrow but vegetated ridge to the 974 metre high point. The ridge section has a few false leads and to avoid these you should stay as close to ridge top as possible.

Mount Wedge, to the northeast, never raised its head from the clouds and southeast towards the Mount Anne area was also solidly in cloud. But, we had some views and the walk up is atmospheric beside the big quartzite buttress. This was another popular walk with three parties completing it the day before us. It is a steep track, particularly for short people with gammy hips!