Day five seemed like a good morning to catch sunrise and scramble around the rocks from my home beach for few hours. With the recent westerly winds, there was barely any swell and our bay was about as calm as I have seen it. Quite a change from a week ago when Splashalot, Doug and I paddled out of Caseys Beach with a five metre swell measured on the Batemans Bay wave buoy. It was big, felt huge, as the kayaks pulled up and over the waves. There was a brisk southerly wind too so we had sea on top of swell which made for what Splashalot calls "interesting conditions" and I call mildly anxiety provoking. Getting back into Caseys Beach, well, that was a thing, but we survived.
But that was a week ago, and this is day five. There are two modestly tricky bits scrambling south from our home bay where you need to either jump in the sea and swim or go around at dead low tide. As the waves crash onto the rocks, I would not recommend jumping into the sea but I have also tried to get around at a high low tide and a low tide with a big swell and not made the two crux sections of the rock scramble.
Climbers will know what a crux is, but, if you are not a climber, the crux is the most difficult part of the route. I like to say, when I am climbing our new project that "once you do all the hard climbing, then comes the crux" because the route has two distinct cruxes separated by sections of sustained climbing. It's not very funny, but it helps to laugh when you are trying hard.
It was a pretty regular low tide today so I had no trouble getting around the two crux sections and onto easy beach walking.
No comments:
Post a Comment