Just Paddle

 Step off.  Free fall.  Know the bottom is rushing toward you and you it.  Do Something.   Mark Twight.

 

Very often I don’t feel immediately like doing whatever I’ve put on the training plan for the day. But that really doesn’t matter. You do the thing you decided to do because you decided to do it.

So, I didn’t immediately feel like paddling today, but it’s my day of the week for logging my usual 20 kilometres (the winter standard when I’m not training for a big trip and just trying to maintain a minimum level of paddle fitness). It was, however, sunny on the beach, and warm enough before I even started to strip off a few winter layers. A dolphin pod was circling around the initial reefs inside my local bay, and they were very close to me – a good omen I thought.

A little chop on the water that ebbed to glassy conditions as my three hour paddle progressed. It’s true, I do only 20 kilometres and I watch the clock a bit, but, I did the thing I planned to do. How strong are young climbers these days? This strong.

Tinderry Twin Peak

There are granite domes, boulders and slabs, but they are buried deep in the regrowth from multiple bushfires. In places, the forest floor resembles the first spill of pick-up sticks in the once popular children’s game; only the floor is not a clean, smooth surface, rather a mix of tenacious scrub growing hard-scrabble where ever there is spare piece of earth.

Tinderry Twin from Tinderry Peak

In a straight line, it’s under two kilometres to the top of Tinderry Twin Peak, but, of course, bush-bashing does not follow a straight line! Like all the parties before us, we parked off the Burra Road near Mount Allen FT (fire trail) and chugged our way up this very steep FT. After about three kilometres, Mount Allen FT merges into West Tinderry FT, and keeps going up for another couple of kilometres. At a bend in the FT where the FT begins to descend again, a cairn marks the jumping off point for Tinderry Twin Peak.

Tinderry Twin

The best route heads almost due east to a saddle to the north of Tinderry Twin Peak then pretty much straight south and uphill to the top. If you keep a careful eye, you should find plenty of cairns and even some flagging which marks a good route with, in places, a scant foot-pad. We followed the foot-pad down but just bush-bashed on the way up and the foot-pad route provided far easier travel. Problem is, no-one, at least from what I could discover, seems able to follow the foot-pad from the FT, but, if you take the most obvious route west from the cairn, you’ll likely run across it.

View from Tinderry Twin

The summit is a bit back and a scramble across some granite boulders. You’ll know you are on the very top when you find a sturdy summit register courtesy of NPWS and there is no higher ground. The view from the top is fantastic, we could even see snow lying on the Main Range.

The Benefits of Being Short and Sturdy

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general. Mark Rippetoe.

I fell off the bike today, down a hill and into a creek, the bike followed and landed on top of me. Apart from a few bumps and scrapes, I am totally fine. I got up, dusted myself and the bike off and finished my ride. Every so often I fall off the bike on the Mogo tracks, although this was probably my most spectacular fall. I wasn’t going to ride the trail that I tumbled on because it has a steep gully drop into a rock garden followed by a steep climb out and frustratingly I never make it through. There are no guarantees in life however, except for the guarantee that if you don’t try you won’t succeed.

Afterwards, I did wonder if I am going to join the cohort of old people who’ve crashed their bike and smashed their body, but, sometimes you’ve just got to trust in yourself. I like to think that the reason I have yet to break anything is because of my regular weight training. It could also be because I am genetically short and sturdy, not glamorous but good for being harder to kill.

Are We Easily Fooled by Narcissists?

Of course we live in the age of pop psychology where everyone has a diagnosed mental health condition (from stigma to social necessity) and anything even minimally upsetting is described as a “micro-aggression” or a sign of “ageism, sexism, ableism,” add your own ism ad nauseum (nausism?). The ABC (that bastion of unbiased reporting) recently published an entire article on how to commit “Small acts of resistance known as "micro-feminism" [which] can help women feel empowered at work.” These micro-feminist acts include addressing females first in e-mails and holding the door open for men (this must be tough for some feminists who are unable to distinguish men from women). Now, I’ve been known to do both of these things from time to time, simply because being a polite and reasonable person frequently involves holding the door for someone following you regardless of sex, and who, but an obsessed ideologue, really notices the gender order of emails? Does anyone? And if you do, for the love of god, get a more interesting life.

Not that long ago a friend told me that the doctor who recommended her 80 plus year old mother (I’m not sure of her exact age but suffice to say that mum is by all metrics old) might consider getting a walker after her mother fell over and could not get up was exhibiting ageism and, as such, insulting her mother, and, probably, also committing several other micro-aggressions. Now I might argue, and so might the statistics, that hip fractures, primarily if not entirely caused by falls in the elderly, significantly increase morbidity and mortality. An Australian series, in line with data from other countries, indicate that 26% of old people who experience a hip fracture are dead within one year. In this context, a doctor who does NOT recommend a walking aid might be considered either uncaring or incompetent, or possibly both. Biology, it turns out, doesn’t care about your isms. Old people and broken bones are not good matches.

The big latest thing is narcissism. Increasing everywhere we are told, and, although I dislike and disdain overwrought over-emotional headlines, it’s likely true that society is getting more narcissistic. I’m pretty sure that I had a narcissist as a friend for a long time. The friendship was a bit of a roller coaster and I was always left feeling vaguely both disquieted and down-trodden after any interaction. Despite this we remained friends for many years and did lots of trips together, until, one day it all fell apart over unreasonable demands. I actually tried to patch the friendship up; generally I believe it’s hard to have too many good friends, but, the patch up fell apart as well because, as one would expect with a narcissist, everything was my fault and nothing really happened the way it did. There is a certain point you reach in interactions with narcissists when the mask irrevocably falls off and the face behind is anything but pretty.

The most quoted (almost revered) book on narcissism is Christopher Lasch’s book The Culture of Narcissism. I found this a tough read. Written in 1979, it’s more a long and rambling essay, with strikingly few sentence and paragraph breaks, than a book of chapters where each chapter builds on the last. I also struggled part way through (it’s rare for me to NOT finish a book) Anne Manne’s The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism. I found Manne’s book too graphically violent and disturbing for bed-time reading and never finished it. The cases she reviewed (coincidentally all or almost all men, perhaps not surprising from an Australian author) seemed to portray people who were more evil than narcissistic. After all, most of us will encounter someone who seems a bit narcissistic in our journey through life but few of us encounter serial rapists and killers. True narcissism is apparently quite rare.

Currently, I’m reading Twenge and Campbell’s book, The Narcissism Epidemic. Twenge, of course, is now well known for her series of books on cultural changes and you might even, cynically, think that her career is built on narcissism (at least research on narcissism). Twenge appears to describe a cultural narcissism probably better described as self-obsession than narcissistic personality disorder which appears to be both rare and dangerous.

We do seem, however, to gravitate towards narcissists, or at least some of us do. I don’t think I’m one of the “some of us” because I am so damned cynical and sceptical, but I could be narcissistic for thinking I’m different. It’s likely true that most narcissists don’t think there is anything wrong with them. Narcissism among the upper classes seems to take the form “see this amazing thing I did for no benefit to myself but all the benefit to others.” Although, when you break the thing down, the doer seems to benefit an awful lot and others, not so much. I always think this when I see prominent political commentators on their favourite soap-box, education, for example. If you’ve been talking about education for 20 years but have not once stepped into your local public school and offered to help teach one child to read, you have achieved far less than you could. Think of it, one day a week, for 20 years teaching one child to read and you would have taught over a thousand people to read. That’s doing the hard yards though, posting on Bluesky is so much easier, plus, you never have to leave the house!

Here’s a great article by Mark Twight about the latest in Everest climbing which is where the worlds faux-climbers go to live out their narcissistic dreams. It’s a shame that young climbers are so disconnected from the great history of alpinism that they do not recognise even some of the best and boldest climbers who ever lived. Perhaps it’s cultural narcissism; the inability to grasp that people who are old now did things that were as hard if not harder than anything today’s young climbers are punching out. It’s a loss of history that only those who’ve been around long enough to witness history made seem to appreciate.

Avoiding the Rain

It’s a month since I’ve been in the sea kayak and it sure feels it. The wave buoy is at 2 metres with a 12 second period but it must be mostly southerly as my home bay is calm, one of the easier days to launch and stay dry. There’s no one else about which is no surprise as it is cold and grey although there is no wind. Still, the sea surface is messy after the storms of the last couple of days.

I’m by myself and the kayak feels wobbly, the paddle awkward and my pace very, very slow. I cut across the bay to look at the latest “eco-resort.” There are plans - aren’t there always - to build a hotel, villas, restaurants, bars, and “put Batemans Bay on the five star tourism map.” Right now, there are a series of “glamping tents” built on very low lying land that is sure to be inundated the next time an East Coast Low coincides with a high tide, which could be later this week. All the big news announcements are from three years ago and there is bugger all going on now so who knows what has happened to putting the Bay on the tourist map. Most of the locals would probably rather stay off that map.

These developments are so bizarre given the government is always bleating about sea level rise and climate change. The land there is all sand with a height above sea level of a metre or less and, it’s very prone to erosion by big tides and storms. In April this year, a storm event saw homes further to the west and on higher ground flooded by sea water. At my home bay, which is significantly higher, waves wash into the car park at high tide during storms, and the one house that is a metre or so above high tide is wrapped in sea weed after a storm event. It’s obvious to anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex that these developments should not be approved and the cost of remediation and relocation will be paid by future generations. Realistically, however, that is business as usual in Australia where we’ll never pay for today something we can push off until tomorrow. Fuck the future as we say here, or don’t but we would if we were being honest.

The tide has turned so it is slow plugging my way northwest up to the big bridge over the Clyde River and I paddle under all the little jetties on the way past. The tourist boat, that plies up and down the Clyde River daily is nearly empty but it runs every day regardless of numbers. West of the bridge, I cross back to the north side as the current will be less. There’s an oyster shop on this side of the river, a quirky little place that also sells coffee and is never super busy but always has some patrons. Further east, the next restaurant is temporarily closed, but the caravan park further east has a surprising number of patrons for this time of year. There’s a gaggle of kayakers in plastic boats at Cullendulla, but I pass by Square Head and paddle south back to my launch site. Frustratingly, I’m three kilometres short of 20 kilometres when I get back so I have to head back out again and south this time to make the magic number. I get back to the house just as the rain starts.

Don't Be Like George or Riding in the Rain

Years ago, one of Canada’s leading mountain guides was at the hospital I worked at giving a talk at Grand Rounds. Grand Rounds are a great tradition in big teaching hospitals and are generally open to medical doctors and other allied health staff. George’s talk was about rescues in Kananaskis Country and the thing I remember most clearly is that technical rescues (involving climbers from alpinists to rock climbers) comprised under 5% of the rescues conducted in any given year. This was very validating to a rock and mountain climber like myself and I strutted out after the talk feeling pretty self-righteous. Most rescues were for things that an alpinist would consider kind of nit-picky – like twisted ankles or getting wet in a rain storm – small ailments that you might feel a tad embarrassed calling the rescue services for. Not that this holds true in 2025, when a hang-nail is a good reason to call for a rescue.

My one an only rescue off Bugaboo Spire 

after Doug got his leg stuck in a crack at over 3,000 metres

The other thing I remember, which was kind of an off the cuff remark, was that coming into the busy rescue season, George had been out putting in big days in the mountains to get in shape, and, as he got older, he lamented how much harder this got every year. Every summer, I think, “stay in shape for the winter climbing season, don’t be like George;” and every year winter rolls around and I realise that, like George, I’m out of shape again.

Under all that mud my legs are actually blue

So, I’m back on the home wall – with a home wall you would think I could stay in shape – and bouldering locally when it’s not raining. I’ve also got a short term goal to ride (on the analog bike) 1000 metres of elevation gain on my local trails. The most elevation I’ve ridden so far is about 800 metres and my legs were shaking like jello on one of those vibrating fat buster machines from the 1980’s. It was too wet today to climb so I went out on the bike and came home in pissing rain after the light rain intensified into a torrential downpour. And here’s a hot tip for analog riders who dread the uphill grind after the downhill run: ride when it is pissing with rain and about 5 degrees Celsius. You’ll discover that the hills are the only thing that keeps your half frozen corpse-body alive.

Cross-Country Riding

Coming around a switchback on the new Burnaaga trail on the bikes today, we passed a couple of blokes pulled over staring at their screens. Strava, of course, not that these guys were Stravaassholes, just blokes checking their statistics. These blokes were riding from the top of Wandera Mountain back to Mogo after being shuttled to the top, and, apparently, had ridden a greater distance than that advertised on TrailForks. Doug and I were riding the two way section which, if you also ride Sandy Pinch FT to the top of the old Snake track is about 26 kilometres and 500 metres of elevation gain.

Since I’ve joined the growing cohort of people with a tracking watch (a Garmin or Polar, or some other brand), I have all those statistics – distance, elevation gain, time – available simply by glancing at my wrist. But I really try not to. Years ago, when a Suunto altimeter watch was the greatest wrist worn device you could get, I had one ski buddy (just one) with an altimeter watch and during the course of a backcountry ski day Dave would give us a run-down on our statistics. It was interesting, at the end of the day, to see our total elevation gain (which I never quite trusted as it was always so much more than the map indicated – although a standard Canadian topographic map can hide a lot of smaller ups and downs in a 40 metre contour interval), but I never really wanted to know our statistics during the course of climbing a mountain. If we weren’t at the top, we were not there yet, and if we wanted to summit we had to keep going, data from the watch notwithstanding.

I think that is a good way to be. Set your goal and just keep going until you get there. Don’t worry too much about the details. If you keep going, those details will take care of themselves and it’s way too easy to let your brain convince your body to stop despite the fact that you have no good reason to stop.

Palerang Trig

It’s funny the places you find tracks. Palerang trig is one of those funny places. There are other higher trigs and even named “mountains” in the area. Lowden trig, for example is 1346 metres high and nearby Mount Major has a 1330 metre contour. I had an idea that we might find a faint foot pad on the north ridge of Palerang but, in the end, we found a decent marked and flagged trail.

There is now a small cairn where the foot-pad leaves Palerang FT. This is pretty much where you would head up the ridge if you were using common sense to walk up. If you are somewhat careful, you should be able to follow the track all the way to the trig, although in a couple of places large trunks have fallen across the pad, and it is faint and vague in other spots.

At the top there is a giant pile of rocks and the trig. The rocks make a handy lunch spot. The view is somewhat obscured by trees but you can see down to Mulloon Creek valley, out to Lake George and around the nearby hills.

We had been hoping to continue along Mulloon FT to a small camping area and then the next day walk further west to the Black Range FT and some granite bouldering but the road was way too rough for our van and there was a tree across the road near Little Bombay Creek. Driving back out we chatted with the bloke driving the grader and he said he would drive the grader up and pull it off although his mandate was not to grade that far. A pleasant walk if you are in the area.

Mount Jagungal

 “Several sexy campsites…” With a review like that and four stars as well, who could be criticised for wanting to hike up Mount Jagungal? It’s from AllTrails, of course, although I was curious who had given the walk one star. When I scrolled through, I found the single one star review but, frustratingly, there was no comment, no description, no explanation of why this walk, that 71 out of 73 reviewers had rated at least four stars garnered such a dismal rank. I mean, how does a walk get one star, it has to be pretty terrible. Did the rater get bitten by a death adder? Attacked by a rabid fox? Trampled by a male brumby after a mare in heat? Not find a single sexy campsite? It boggles the mind. I’ve had some pretty awful trips over the years, including one where we lost our entire food drop and skied for four days through heavy rain and snow to escape with no food and I still would have given that trip more than one star.

I’ve had Jagungal on my list for years. For many years in a row I had a plan to ski up the mountain over a four day trip from Guthega, but, for those many years, the snow-pack had been so miserly and myself such a snow snob - coming from big mountains and deep snow-packs in the Canadian mountains - that I could never garner the enthusiasm to drive six hours to carry my skis across a lot of flat country side.

A bike and hike is the very best way ascend the mountain unless the idea of a loop walk predominantly on fire trails appeals. The country you pass through is very pretty however, so a two day walk would also be worth more than one star, at least by my rating system.

We had a 40 minute drive to get to Round Mountain trail-head so we started a bit later than previous days but were still away relatively early. The ground was frosty and the trail headed uphill straight away which my old body found uncomfortable. I need a reasonable warm-up these days before pumping my heart rate up to 150. After the first hill, the FT descends down to a ford on a manky bridge made of rusty corrugated metal; a hill I knew I would have to push on the way back.

After that, however, the FT is a delight, rolling along the Toolong Range across open plains with lovely views and hills which are mostly easy to ride. A few kilometres from Derschkos Hut, we met a couple of blokes hiking who warned us about a rambunctious fox breaking into packs and shared the delightful news that there was a track up the mountain. Doug and I had assumed we would be bush-bashing, so this was great news. We passed Derschkos Hut and turned onto Grey Mare FT and, shortly after Grey Mare FT plunged down into and back out of a steep creek gully, we found the trail.

We stashed the bikes in the bush and proceeded to follow the track up a short drainage through some head high scrub to gain a ridge that runs SSW from the top of Mount Jagungal. Once on the ridge, the incline laid back, the scrub cleared and it was a pleasant walk up alpine country to the top. The gently rolling high plains that spread south to the Main Range were pretty and would be nice to walk or ski across some time. The ride out was half an hour quicker than the way in but I did have to push up that first hill.

Mount Tabletop

Riding the bicycles out of Three Mile Dam Campground early on a frosty morning, the only other camper up and about gives us a thumbs up. We ride up the paved road to Selwyn Snow Resort and slip off onto Selwyn FT which climbs 50 metres up to the ridge where the lifts run during the winter ski season. In the big fires of 2020 the resort burnt completely with an extensive rebuild completed in 2023, but the resort only managed to open for a short period in 2024 because it was too difficult to maintain snow coverage with warm temperatures and lack of natural snow.

Ostensibly, Australia is committed to net zero and obsessed with meeting climate targets, and yet, the Blyton Group spent $30 million rebuilding a “snow” resort that cannot survive without artificial snow-making. This large expenditure was made possible by a sweet deal by the NSW State Government who granted a new 40 year lease and facilitated planning permissions necessary for the rebuild. Snow making, of course, uses huge amounts of power and water. Exactly how much power and water is required to maintain snow at the resort is not available in the public domain – quelle surprise! How this meshes with Australia being a climate leader is unclear, and, in essence, any individual with a normally developed level of scepticism will find the entire enterprise suspect.

If you value the natural environment, and particularly Australia’s precious and limited alpine area, you might find the plans for Selwyn Resort just a little bit disturbing. Quoting from the website:

The creation of a brand-new ‘Winter Wonderland’, the first of its kind in Australia, will see the introduction of a range of exciting new snow play products in the coming years including a tubing carousel, skating rink with bumper cars, kids snowmobiles and a miniature enchanted village.

The commonality among all these planned features are, of course, their artificial nature and lack of actual physical activity required to participate. In fact, this dystopian future sounds more like a Disneyland comes to the alpine experience than it does a real authentic experience where people connect with their environment and use their bodies in a healthy way. This is increasingly the style and practice in Australia – the worlds greatest nanny state where the health and safety bureaucrats have the backing of the increasingly timid bed-wetter population – nature and adventure either off-limits completely (see the Arapilies climbing bans) or tamed to become an experience that encompasses no adventure or challenge whatsoever. There is a small and nascent movement against the over-engineering of the outdoor environment but the broader societal influences towards increasing government reliance are broadly outstripping this counter-culture movement. Australia, unfortunately, exists under the tyranny of the “do-gooders.” As C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

But, it’s May and there is no snow at Selwyn, and only a dusting of frost. From the 1600 metre high point on the ridge, Selwyn FT heads south, undulating along a gentle ridge of burnt snowgums, falling down to Nine Mile Creek, then climbing again to pass along the eastern and southern flank of Tabletop Mountain. It’s lovely riding, and a bicycle a fantastic way to travel this country. After 2.5 hours we are at the base of Tabletop Mountain and the broad flat summit a mere 20 minute walk up grassy slopes. To the southwest, at 2062 metres is Mount Jagungal. Not a particularly high mountain, but, from this angle, almost looking like a real mountain not merely a rounded hill.

Leaving the van early in the morning, we had forgotten lunch and our snack bags feel very light. We split half an energy bar and a few nuts, and then walk back down to the bicycles for the ride out. Bicycle travel is even better on the way back and we are back at Three Mile Dam in time for lunch.

Tantangara Mountain

The old argument about trail sharing sites, surfaced on a blog I follow yesterday. It’s a tedious argument and driven only by some kind of fake elitism, and, much like other far left debates, makes zero sense from a logical perspective. It’s really about protecting your own turf from the undeserving interlopers, which is a bit weird coming as it does from the inclusive crowd. But, it spurred me to have a look at AllTrails for Tantangara Mountain because the government topographic maps are all a bit inaccurate.

Earlier versions of the standard topographic map call the 1745 metre high point Tantangara Mountain but have no tracks marked while the later version shows the track from the Snowy Mountains Highway but not from Rocky Plains Campground and leave off any names from the high point labelling the top simply SMA0093. I had to use AI to find out what SMA represents, apparently, Snowy Mountains Authority and it means the map was produced during the planning of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme.

I don’t actually think AllTrails is very useful as almost any trail/route I have ever looked up on the site says something like “very hard, extra severe, you will likely die.” Mount Jagungal, for example, is described as “hard” (even though there is a good trail all the way to the top), has only four reviews and gets three stars (out of five) from most raters. Most real bushwalkers, who will have Mount Jagungal on their tick list lying as it does in the Jagungal Wilderness and being prominent from many locations will scratch their heads at this and wonder what the raters have been smoking or not, as I thought hash was supposed to make you mellow and happy.

But back to Mount Tantangara. The current topographic map (and AllTrails) makes it look like you should park near Black Walters Creek and follow the trail (an old road) east to the top. This works but the problem arises as soon as you try to legally park. One on side of the Snowy Mountains Highway is a chain up area. I’m not aware of any laws about parking in chain up bays (nor is AI) but it does not seem like a good idea as you could get a ticket. On the other side of the road is a gravel pull-out, ideal for parking except for the sign banning parking.  The better option, is to park down at Rocky Plains area, either at Sawyers Hut or near the campground and follow the track – not marked on any map or AllTrails north to join the track from the Snowy Mountains Highway. The starting elevation is roughly the same but the walk is about 2 kilometres shorter.

It’s a very pleasant walk. We saw some feral horses down near Black Walters Creek, despite heavy culls they are everywhere. The entire walk is easy and scenic owing to burnt forest and the ridge line track. From the top, we used a compass to locate our next couple of destinations: Tabletop Mountain and Mount Jagungal, and also Mount Morgan which we had completed the day before. Mount Jagungal looks like a real mountain from this location and will pique any peak-baggers interest, unless, of course, you read AllTrails and then you would simply shrug, turn over, and go back to sleep.

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!