Trumpism Comes to the South Coast!

This report out of the south coast where a work party was over-run by militant toxic masculine identifying persons. Our reporter Ima Fended was on the ground (not literally). Below is they/them’s report:

Upon arriving at the agreed upon meeting place I was shocked that there were no flags flying, none. Not even the rainbow colours flag! Strikingly, I was the only attendee wearing a keffiyeh, even though, this location and activity was absolutely tailor (not used in the gendered sense) made for showing our solidarity with the oppressed world-wide.

But even more shocking was the gender make-up of the work party. Fully 80% of the attendees were cis gendered hetero-normative white males! The patriarchy clearly had control of this event! Introductions were completed and I was both horrified and appalled that no-one asked my pronouns or what my sexual proclivities were. Obviously, when maintaining trails it is of the utmost importance to know who likes boinking men, women, sheep, or no-one at all. Anyone who was asexual or identifies as a eunuch or echidna would have been traumatised by this omission. I stand in solidarity with you!

There may have been eco-sexual’s amongst us, but without the traditional acknowledgements: land acknowledgements, welcome to country, reciting of your various personal intersectional oppressions it was impossible to know. For myself, I identify as short, stout, stocky, female and old, thereby having at least five different and intersecting oppressions forced upon me. I’m sure there are more I just haven’t identified yet!

Once the actual work of the day began it was clear that the patriarchy was going to continue their oppressive colonisation of other peoples. The cis gendered hetero-normative male identified persons took on the more difficult and dangerous job of running the brush-cutters. The operation of this heavy and unwieldy piece of equipment is more suited to larger stronger individuals and I felt robbed of the chance to have my legs sliced off and my hearing damaged permanently, not to mention the possibility of losing an eye (or two). How dare these patriarchal colonisers rob me of my right to suffer bodily injury! It’s obvious that the patriarchy does not understand that there are no physical differences between persons assigned male at birth and persons assigned female at birth. The reason that men can compete in women’s sport and win all the medals is only because women are such shit athletes! If persons assigned female at birth complain it is because they are sore losers. Remember, the most effective way to protect womens’ rights is to erase them all!

On the topic of labour and work, it soon became evident that the male identified persons worked very hard. They barely stopped for almost three hours, brushing, raking, clipping, cutting. Sadly, there were no blessings to the earth mother offered when vegetation that encroached upon the trail was removed. This is a perfect example of the toxicity of the patriarchy: the belief that nature can be bent to the will of “man.” On a number of occasions I attempted to kneel to offer a non-denominational prayer to the fallen vegetation but the “men” simply asked if I was alright, and offered to relieve me of my burdens. They seemed completely unaware that the burden I carried was wrought by the oppressive masculine patriarchy with its colonialist ways!

At the bottom of the trail we had cleared, the “males” offered me a ride back up to the meeting place in a gasoline powered vehicle. There was not a single electric vehicle in attendance, not even a Tesla, even though we no longer speak of Tesla as saving the planet after Elon Musk became a patsy to the fascist dictator of America (aka Donald Trump). I refused, despite the fact that all my clothing, the bicycle I had ridden to the event, my house, and entire life-style runs on so called “fossil fuels.” I believe, as do all right minded people, that my endless moralising and virtue signalling off-sets any carbon that I might be using and grants me exclusive access to taking long haul flights anywhere in the world that I wish to go where I indulgently gaze upon the more primitive and less evolved life-forms who have not yet discovered the blessing that is “diversity, equity and inclusion”: DEI is that DIE? I’m not completely sure, but what I do know is, that like all leftists, I hold the high moral ground and am not required to change any of my own behaviours to reduce my environmental impact.

As bad as all this was, things got worse! A propane powered cooker was brought out and sausages made from actual living animals were cooked up! There was also fried onions, bread, and a variety of beverages. I asked for a vegan option, preferably a sausage made from the ground up bark of the eucalyptus sanctamonious, but the other attendees looked at me as if I was mad! It did not escape my notice that the male identifying individuals – aka the evil colonialists – had gotten up early on a winters morning, packed their vehicles (carbon powered!) full of the supplies that were needed, arrived early to set up the event, coordinated the event, cooked the food after the event, and cleaned everything up afterwards. This was done purportedly to support the community of mountain bikers, as if we cannot support ourselves by sitting at home on the NDIS and complaining endlessly until the government hires immigrants to do the work thus making our community more resilient and connected! It’s almost as if they don’t think that communism works!

In opposition to the tyrannical control exerted upon me, I have begun to organise a community event where those of us who identify as oppressed victims are able to meet in an emotionally safe space. Don’t worry, we won’t actually be doing anything to support the community, get our hands dirty or inconvenience ourselves in any way. We will however, fly all the flags, wear our keffiyehs with pride and, hopefully buy some cheap goods made in overseas sweat shops bearing appropriate logos – for example, Fight The Patriarchy, De-colonise Australia, End The Occupation, Australia Is A Genocidal State - preferably manufactured in Chinese sweat shops. China, as you know, is a very successful communist country with an outstanding record of protecting human rights and they have the most sophisticated social credit system in the world! The Chinese can track everything their citizens do and right aligned behaviour is rewarded with visits outside the labour camp and the ability to buy consumer electronics (but not access the nasty free speaking internet). They might even let you keep both your kidneys!

Your Feelings Don't Matter

There is no difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. Jordan Peterson.

Near the end of almost an hour of near meaningless babble, when I semi-seriously thought about throwing myself off the nearby cliff onto the rocks below to end the misery of listening to two self-obsessed people talk about their climb up Temple Crag, I heard the words Contact Pass, and thought, “Wait just a minute, I think I’ve been to Contact Pass.”

Pallisade Crest from the South Fork of

Big Pine Creek

And, in fact, I have. Back in 2011, the year before Doug and I moved to Australia, we skied up to Contact Pass at the end of April. My trip notes indicate that I took my skis off and kicked steps for about 60 metres, while Doug managed to ski the entire distance to the pass. I remember the pass, it was a very spectacular narrow notch with Temple Crag on one side and an unnamed peak on the other. Our trip notes also indicate that we had an excellent corn snow descent. We had come up from the South Fork of Big Pine Creek, while a few years previously we had hiked into the Big Pine Lakes from the North Fork of Big Pine Creek. Things are high in the Sierra Mountains. Big Pine Lakes lie at over 3,000 metres while Temple Crag is almost 4,000 metres high. I’d be huffing and puffing up there now after a decade of living at sea level.

Doug on a crest of wind-blown snow at

Contact Pass

I’m not sure why M and M featured on the Sharp End Podcast, a podcast ostensibly about mountain accidents, as there was no accident and their story is merely a trip report. Interesting, perhaps, to people who are intent on climbing Temple Crag, but otherwise similar to dozens of other trip reports. What stood out to me, apart from the fact that M and M both talked too much to say too little, was how much emphasis they put on “checking in with each other.” The final half hour of the podcast, it’s possible they mention “check in” around a million times (OK, I’m exaggerating). These people were slow, 8 hours to descend 500 feet is slow, as is 4 hours to ascend a couple of hundred feet to get to the start of the climb. As I listened, I wondered if BB “checked in” with his partners every five minutes when climbing Wild Thing on MountChephren or did he and his partners simply focus on the task at hand, climbing the impressive and daunting east face in winter? Would these two slow climbers have been faster if they spent less time “checking in” and more time climbing?

Contact Pass

I’m going to check in with my readers now and say that if you think Blanchard or any other serious adventure athlete spends such an inordinate amount of time and energy “checking in” you don’t understand peak performance. Peak performance requires doing things despite how you feel, because, in all honesty, you probably feel like quitting.

Corn snow on the descent from Contact Pass

Which is not to say that outdoor adventurers should ignore conditions. If you are in the middle of a thunder-storm (as M and M were on their first attempt up Temple Crag), bailing is entirely appropriate, but, mostly your feelings don’t matter; what matters is facts, even though facts are slippery to grasp in dynamic outdoor environments.

Willow Lake, South Fork Big Pine Creek

The emotional people who like to “check in” constantly, often seem to be a generation or two younger than me which makes me wonder if this is a generational issue or a social and cultural issue. It’s possible it’s both. Perhaps, as you get older, you start to realise that if you want to get shit done you have to ignore your emotions and focus on the task at hand, but, it’s likely that a bigger chunk is cultural. Young people today are raised to believe that feelings are all important and virtually immutable, when in fact feelings are merely imperfect conjectures of our defective attention system. We give away our own power when we become focused to the point of obsession on our feelings. If you are 21 hours into a 23 hour day, forget about your feelings or “checking in” and focus on getting the f**k off the mountain.

View from Contact Pass

I don’t mean to denigrate M and M’s achievement. They did an awful lot of things right and, most importantly were willing to have a go, not just once but twice. Undoubtedly, they have the hubris of youth; that mix of heady self-confidence and absolute certainty that allows adventurers to charge forth into the face of challenges they can’t quite imagine unencumbered by the baggage of decades of hard won summits and equally disappointing retreats. Those times you tried and failed, that eat away at your confidence; the accidents, the injuries, even the fatalities. All those years and experiences that strip away youthful hubris and leave you knowing that you can prepare for success but the outcome might well be as predictable as game of roulette.

Skiing up Big Pine Creek

There are many things I miss about youth. The physical strengths of course, but more importantly the blind faith that allows you to set off on expeditions and adventures for which you are ill-prepared whilst holding fast to your own ability in the belief that success is all but guaranteed. You get older, your body is less cooperative, but your mind still dreams of the days when you believed anything was possible and acted accordingly.

Tinderry Peak

The day after we hiked up Tinderry Twin Peak we hiked up Tinderry Peak. The most common route appears to be along Round Flat FT for a couple of kilometres to a point where the FT makes a 90 degree turn to the east. An old road bed marked “closed for revegetation” continues roughly north. The commonest route appears to be along this old road bed towards Roberts Creek and then up onto an east facing spur ridge and thereafter to the top.

The Ballroom with Tinderry Peak behind

Instead of following this route, we decided to walk an extra three kilometres along the FT (joining East Tinderry FT) until we were due east of Tinderry Peak and bushwack straight west to the top. Australian bushwacking is often as slow as 1 to 1.5 kilometres/an hour (sometimes less) so we figured we could gain a couple of hundred metres of elevation gain at least as quickly on a FT and reduce the amount of overall bushwacking. Given how slow and thick some of the bushwacking was, this seemed like a sensible choice. Additionally, but unknown to us when planning the trip, an old road bed leads west from East Tinderry FT for 750 metres to the head of Groggy Creek thus reducing the bushwacking distance even further.

Tinderry Peak Summit

A pig trap marks the end of the old road bed and the best and quickest route to the top of Tinderry Peak is to head west up a gentle draw/gully to a spot just north of a closed contour (1540 metres, GR067468). The closed contour is a big area of large slabs and boulders. I called it “The Ballroom” as once on top, a big flat expanse of slab gives views to the south and north to Tinderry Peak. However, thick brush and lots of scrambling over, under and around boulders surrounds The Ballroom. It’s nice to visit once, but much quicker to avoid the boulders by staying slightly to the north.

The flat terrain on the way to Tinderry Peak is thick in places but, near the top, older forest is open underneath and another small draw leads to a saddle of boulders and slabs just south of the very top. It is an easy scramble north along boulders to the top where there is another NPWS log book, although with much fewer entries than the one on Tinderry Twin Peak. The view is better than Tinderry Twin and is a full 360 view right out to the Main Ranges with, on this day, snow covering the tops. From the peak you can see that Tinderry Nature Reserve is an island of native forest surrounded by farm land. The round trip distance to Tinderry Peak isn’t all that far (maybe 18 kilometres all up) and the elevation gain under 1000 metres but the travel at times is quite slow. For the second day in a row we were wondering if we were going to get back to the trail head before dark.

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.