Fear and Victimhood

It almost looks as if I have been a complete hermit for the last couple of weeks, but it is not so. A couple of days ago, for example, I was out hiking hills on the Downfall Fire Trail. This is probably one of my favourite bush-walks in the area although it is not on a foot track but on an old fire trail. The old fire trails through Currowan State Forest are fast disappearing since the bushfires went through in 2019 and then the floods caused massive erosion. Most 4WD’s probably can’t get up them anymore, so they become quiet trails through beautiful gum and burrawang forests along rambling ridge-lines.

There are nice views from Downfall Ridge over to Monga National Park (NP) and you can access Monga NP via a variety of different old trails from Currowan. I went early as there were thunderstorms forecast and I remembered our last walk through Murramarang NP and the drenching we got. When I left, the radar had rain over the ACT already. It was humid, but although it clouded up, no rain while I was out.

I took an old side trail into Monga NP to see if it was easy to get down to Cabbage Tree Creek but the track ran out before and I had decided that there would be no bushwacking on this day as I was in shorts with only my Altra running shoes on. I’ve been to Cabbage Tree Creek before when I was doing a lot of running around in the bush. I’ve been to most of the places you can see from Downfall Ridge at one time or another. Down into the Nelligen Creek valley and up onto Erics Ridge. All over Bolaro Mountain multiple times. All these trips are getting harder now, the regrowth is so robust and it will be years or decades before the forest thins out to old growth again.

Yesterday, one of the kayak squad had organised a paddle day. It was advertised as an easy paddle day, and it was. But, it’s good to see friends and a strange experience, in a way, from my usual targeted training to paddle slowly down the coast, stop on a beach for a break, stop again at a cafe for coffee (I almost never visit cafes), chat with friends, talk about old trips and new plans. I had the surreal experience of talking to someone who has had four vaccines, caught the ‘rona, and still believes that all of these experimental injections are vaccines. Interesting to reflect also on how, for the believers, the narrative has subtly changed. Easily visible to those of us outside the cult, but inexorable and completely invisible to those steeped in the fear and anxiety.

There has been a few climbing days, even climbing in Sydney at West Bangor, which was fun to go back to again. I haven’t climbed there seriously since the first year we moved to Australia and I didn’t feel in good shape for sandstone climbing. There’s been local climbing and working on some newer local climbing, and bouldering, and tweaking my shoulder when my footholds crumbled on a boulder out in the forest. Two paddle days, one south to loop around Jimmies Island and one solo paddle out to the Tollgates and over to North Head. Unless it is skill training, I always do a minimum of 20 kilometres to make the fuss of washing the boat and gear worth it. It’s a variation of the drive to adventure ratio.

I have seriously cut back on my news consumption, which was pretty minimal anyway and only amounted to glancing at the ABC news while I was having morning coffee. The ABC stands for Always Be Cowed as every news article features the latest thing you should be afraid of. One of the recent stories was about how you can get sick to death – death I tell you – simply working in the garden. In addition to Always Being Cowed, the ABC wants to convince you that you are a victim. Of society, gender, the railways, the price of food, the magpies nesting in spring, doesn’t matter. Everyone is a victim.

For a long time I could not work out why the Always Be Cowed media wants everyone to be a victim. The fear factor (or Always Be Cowed) is easy to understand as, in case you hadn’t woken up to the last 2.5 years, humans are highly responsive to fear (no matter how irrational). The victim mentality, made less sense to me until I realised that if you adopt a victim mentality you are not only desperately unhappy but powerless to change your circumstances. Virtually every Always Be Cowed story (the totality of their articles unless they are predicting death by paper cuts) has a victim; someone who is absolutely powerless to do anything about their circumstances.

This is just great for the Always Be Cowed media, a readership scared of their own shadows and believing themselves unable to move into the shade.

Speechless

Harry signed me off on the final task of my grade 3 Sea Skills somewhere off Cape Frankland as we paddled from Royden Island to Killiecrankie on a south to north crossing of eastern Bass Strait. On assessment day, a few weeks before, I had been instructed by the inscrutable Finn to turn my kayak in a circle around his stationary kayak using a reverse sweep stroke on one side of the boat only. Doug, who was also being assessed for Sea Skills did this with alacrity while I disappeared out towards New Zealand, going backwards certainly but not in anything resembling a circle.

Turning in circles off Cape Frankland: PC DB

The key, of course, as all astute readers will have worked out, is using a rudder, but I almost never use a rudder either turning the kayak or going backwards and, as I have pronounced left-right dyslexia, I simply could not make the thing work. I am the person who, at 59 (and I am embarrassed to admit this) has to put their left hand up into the letter L to work out which is my left side and which is right (L for left). Doug has got used to this not so amusing penchant, and will frequently ask, when my driving directions have him about to deliver the car straight into a lake, brick wall, or other non-drive able thoroughfare, “Is that a left – left or a right – left?”

Leaving Deal Island, PC: DB

Eventually, with a lot of intermediary coaching, I worked it out, but, as with many skills we are tested on over the years, I’ve already forgotten how it works and, in all likelihood, could never do such a thing again. In between training for sea skills, which mostly involved hanging upside down in the kayak in surf and rolling back up again, we were paddling long distances to make sure we were fit for the lengthy crossings that are the nub of any Bass Strait crossing.

Trying to keep up with Quick Nick, PC: DB

It’s a good thing kayak expeditions are enjoyable because I can’t say the training was all that much fun. It was a rough type of summer out on the water and I was sea sick most days. Sometimes Quick Nick would meet us for a paddle somewhere and chasing him down on a 50 kilometre day is enough to make me heave at the best of times. On our longest day, 60 km, about half way through the distance, I inadvertently scooped up a large blue bottle with my paddle. The trailing stinger got wrapped around my hands and forearms, and, while I was trying to scrape the wretched thing off, the tentacles twisted across my face from forehead to chin. The poisonous creature was impossible to get off and we only managed it by scraping the tentacles off with a knife. By the time we got back home, I was criss-crossed with large and painful red wheals.

Arriving at Hogan Island, PC: DB

Eventually, of course, the training came to an end and we were off on the trip. With some smooth talking, we managed to get three kayaks onto a single crossing of the Bass Strait ferry. This, in my opinion, is the crux of any Bass Strait crossing: getting the kayaks, if you have more than two, onto the ferry. After discussing the issue with all the people I knew who had paddled Bass Strait, we settled on the “be really nice to the ferry people and see if they will help you out” approach. This did work, although I feel that the youth who insisted we fill out all 38 luggage labels in quadruplicate using a quill dipped in albatross blood before he would let us begin the laborious process of strapping the kayaks to the transport trolley took things a bit too far.

Loading boats, PC: DB

Ours was not the most creative solution, that honour goes to south coast paddler Pete Cole who managed to convince a tourist to stick his 5 metre plus Nadgee through the window of his RV and into the living space behind. Pete, however, is famous on the south coast for being able to talk a priest into giving up the faith. One time we were “resting” on a beach on the south coast when a local resident came by to tell us that we could not “rest” there. Two hours later, when the dear lady finally got away from Pete she had agreed to return first thing next morning with fresh coffee and bacon buns for all of us.

Unique solutions, PC: GR

This is a trip report full of digressions, which, is really because the paddle itself went pretty smoothly. True, Doug was taken down for 48 hours after he ate a dodgy piece of bacon for breakfast – I can almost hear the chortles of the vegan crowd. We did manage to blow the boom from the mast of Doug’s sail paddling in gale conditions out of Spike Bay, and these same conditions resulted in my rudder falling off about fifteen minutes later. I am pretty sure I learnt a few new Finnish curse words as we pulled into Preservation Island for the second time in half an hour to repair this other equipment failure, but one never knows when new swear words will be useful.

Waiting for freighters between Deal and Hogan Islands, PC: DB

The 4.30 am wake-up to leave in the dark from Killiecrankie for Deal Island was a bit rough and paddling out of the bay in complete darkness (no moon and thick sea fog) as the reefs broke around us was spooky, but sunrise on the water is always a delight and, to my own surprise I was so relaxed on the long crossing that I almost fell asleep and had to snort a few of Harry’s No Doze to keep myself awake. When I’ve had three litres of strong black coffee in the morning and people say “you might be addicted,” I respond, “and your point is?” If I haven’t had coffee, my reply cannot be reproduced in a family magazine.

One thing I had tried to sort out before the trip was the “cough, cough” delicate matter of “making water” whilst on the extended island hops. Easy for the blokes, but not so easy for us ladies. I’d asked all the women I knew who’d done such trips how they’d managed, and, strangely, not a single one could remember. I remember. Who can forget straddling two boats 40 kilometres out from Killiecrankie?

Moonrise Over Killiecrankie Bay, PC: DB

Prior to leaving, I’d gone so far as to purchase a “feminal.” What a device. The advertising literature shows a coterie of women peeing like race horses in various outdoor locations. One try of this useless piece of plastic was enough for me to come home, cut it up into small pieces and place it into the weekly recycling bin.

View from Barn Hill on a windy day:  PC: DB

But, I’ve digressed again. Deal Island was a paradise. Admittedly a windy paradise, but beautiful nonetheless and the walks on the island – to the lighthouse, up to Barn Hill or over to one of the many bays on the island – were just delightful. I almost think I’d do the entire thing again just to get back to Deal Island.

Fairy Penguin, Hogan Island

On Hogan Island, we sat up one night wrapped in sleeping bags to watch the Fairy Penguins come ashore. As dusk set in, a large seal began patrolling the rocky beach and soon enough, we watched as a penguin was tossed into the air by the seal. A bloody but one-sided battle ensued, as the seal flung the penguin about for fully 15 minutes before devouring it. Pacific gulls swooped in and cleaned up the scraps. It was a moment straight out of a David Attenborough documentary. The penguins, undeterred or perhaps with no other choice, still came ashore, hopping, jumping and waddling up surprisingly steep slopes to their burrows.

At Entrance Point at the mouth of Corner Inlet, with only a dozen kilometres remaining, we took a selfie to mark the end of the trip and ended up with a photo of a bunch of old people looking like deranged escapees from a secure facility grinning manically at the camera. A month or so after the trip, Harry’s partner Dee asked me “What did you guys talk about?” “Nothing,” I said, “We are three introverts.”

Impaled By An Ice Axe

 Impaled by an ice axe, this month’s episode of The Sharp End is a wee bit gruesome, but the man with an ice axe through his chest survived. I remember years and years ago in Canada, a climber fell off an ice climb and impaled himself with one of his tools, so these freak accidents happen very occasionally.

The Emmons Winthrop route on Mount Rainier is the easiest route on the mountain and most commonly done by guided groups or the inexperienced. Judging by the somewhat strange and confusing terminology used by the protagonist in the episode, I would assume that the party of two – both of whom sustained very serious injuries – were the latter.

The accident was the classic “fall on snow, failure to self-arrest, roped but not belayed” scenario that plays out across the mountains, particularly crowded mountains like Rainier, every year. Sometimes, I think that less experienced climbers fail to understand that there are no fall zones on routes, where you must be absolutely 100% sure you will not fall if you are going to traverse that zone. And, it’s not simply that YOU must not fall, if you have tied onto a rope with a partner or two, NO-ONE on the rope team can fall. Arresting falls on snow, particularly hard and/or steep snow, once one person on the rope has slipped and begun to accelerate is largely impossible. If there is any doubt about a fall taking place, protection must be placed, even if it is running protection and not fixed belays.

As usual, the most interesting part of the podcast is the take away lesson(s), and, as is common, I raise a proverbial eyebrow at the lessons the protagonist garnered from a near death experience with an ice axe. Number one on the list was using a proper climbing carabiner to attach your InReach (a popular push button emergency device) to your climbing pack. Silly me, I thought NOT FALLING would be lesson number 1, and 2, and 3, and etc. Seriously, DO NOT FALL.

The other classic about this particular accident is that “everything was fine until it wasn’t.” For the beginner climber, this is a bit like the old quote about good judgement: “Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.” Humans are masters at recognising patterns but pattern recognition only comes from hundreds of different experiences and without those hundreds of experiences, the moment when the trip crosses the line from being fine to teetering on the edge of disaster passes unnoticed.

I suspect this party was actually on the edge of disaster long before the fall took place as the protagonist describes looking for a place to stop to eat and drink, implying that neither climber was comfortable enough on the terrain to stand still, take a pack off, eat and drink. If this was the case, the best solution would have been the most difficult, descend, go away, get more experience and come back later. This is what David Jones, an old acquaintance of mine (and guide book author) from Canada, advises when parties start up routes like the NW ridge of Sir Donald and require belays right out of the col. In our modern age however, a suggestion as prosaic as “come back when you are better,” would be considered an outrage. After all, everybody is supposedly equal.

There are however, a few strategies the lead climber could have used to safe-guard the moment when the two climbers stopped and the instant when the fall happened. First is chopping out a platform to stand on. After all, both climbers were carrying ice axes. The second is making a quick belay from an ice axe or picket (the protagonist had a picket in his back pack – not that a picket in a backpack is much use). The third is stamping a solid platform while holding the ice axe in self belay position such that if the protagonist had fallen, he would have been caught immediately by the axe. Anyone of these things would likely have prevented the entire incident.

The New Canyoning

Years and years ago – in this instance using the term decades while appearing hyperbolic is actually realistic – I did a bunch of Blue Mountains canyons. Some were commonly done (even back then), like Claustral or Wollongambe, while others saw only a few parties each year (like Thurat Rift). I had no special equipment, none of us had special equipment because there was no special equipment. I used a harness tied from webbing, a simple figure 8 and a locking carabiner. Our gear was carried in doubled garbage bags in regular bush-walking packs. We wore sneakers, had no helmets, wore cast off wet-suits that surfers had discarded as worn out at the local “op shop,” and packed a couple of sangers along with a litre of water. The most advanced piece of technological kit that any of us carried was a compass as navigating out always involved trekking through trackless bush.

Since returning to Australia after a quarter of a century living in the Canadian mountains, I go out every so often and do a canyon or two, but canyoning will never be my real passion sport. That is reserved for climbing. The thing about canyoning, which modern canyoners don’t really want you to know is that, unless you are doing very remote, wet and wild canyons, canyoning is basically a pretty simple sport. You walk to the canyon entrance, down-climb or abseil into the canyon and repeat – downclimb, abseil, walk, maybe swim - until the canyon runs out and then you walk/scramble back up to the top of the escarpment.

Given the simplicity of canyoning I am gob-smacked by the complexity which canyoners feel the need to imprint onto an uncomplicated sport. I saw a picture on a guiding site where some dude had posted an image of the kit he carries on his harness when canyoning.  The items were numbered 1 through 12, but there were actually 27 separate pieces of kit¹ carried on (I would assume) every canyon by this bloke. A fairly conservative cost estimate is $2,000. Yes, you could buy a car for that.  

If you are going to argue “but he is guiding,” hold tightly onto that thought. I’ve climbed beside/behind mountain guides taking clients up multi-pitch traditional routes in the Rocky Mountains of Canada who routinely carry less kit than that. If you need that much kit to walk, abseil, scramble, swim, there is either something serious going wrong or you have fallen into the trap of substituting pieces of equipment for ability.

Interestingly, at least to me, is the current “canyon grade”² for Thurat Rift canyon - V4a2VI. I kind of like that rating, although I think that if you dumped the 30 extra pieces of kit and were even remotely fit, it is possible to do Thurat Rift in a day (we did). Grade inflation is a wonderful thing and proves that “the older I get the better I was.”

One of my guide acquaintances in Canada used to tell a story of heading out at dark from the Abbott Pass Hut³ to rescue a group of climbers who were attempting Mount Victoria. The climbers were fitted out with excessive amounts of equipment (V threads, snow stakes, snow flukes, rock and ice climbing protection) and were moving so slowly and unsteadily that they were forced to turn around long before the summit (most competent climbers solo the standard southeast ridge route). I relate this long ago tale from another country because carrying about excessive pieces of kit has consequences, chief among them an overly slow pace.

It is a strange phenomenon in modern life, which seems over-complex already to the point of stress inducing (think about how many insurance policies the average person has) that some of us are compelled to complicate simple activities with needless and multiplicative bits of expensive equipment. I can’t work out whether people are trying to make simple activities seem complex in order to set themselves apart from others or have simply been hoodwinked by business interests using social proof as a marketing tool.

128 if you count a harness, 29 for rope bag, and 30 for helmet

2Another thing that did not exist back in the day, a canyon grading system.

3The Abbot Pass hut was destroyed in 2022.

Murramarang on a Birthday

Down here on the south coast, our birthday celebrations always involve some kind of outdoor activity. Sometimes, we get well and truly thrashed, one of my favourite activities, other times we just go out to have fun. With climbing out of the question again due to the incessant rain, we went out to have a bushwalk along the new Murramarang Coastal Track.

I have mixed feelings about the upgraded walk. While I love bushwalking and think the more people who bushwalk the better we’ll all be, there is always an element of environmental damage that occurs whenever something gets easier and concurrently more popular. A few years ago, I walked the route of the new track but, as there was no track, I either walked through the bush (easy as it is quite open) or followed the shoreline. I hardly saw anyone except at the road accessible areas and there was really no garbage. The first thing, however, Doug and I encounter on a new section of the track is a big fire-pit full of broken liquor bottles. We cleaned this up as best we could and cursed a certain segment of society that leaves detritus behind them.

The track is really nice. Well situated and with good views along the way. Both the coast and the forest are beautiful and it is particularly lovely to be walking through forest that did not burn in the catastrophic fires of 2019 and 2020. We only covered the southern half, so I will have to go back and see how work is progressing on the northern half. Soon after we turned about, the thunderheads that had been amassing decided to loose their load of rain and we walked back with the sound of thunder crashing around us, sparking lightening and heavy rain. But, a birthday is also a good time to be uncomfortable.

Paddling From Patonga

First up the paddling which was on the Central Coast. I always have to look these things up when Australians use regional names, like the Sunshine Coast, or the Sapphire Coast or the Central Coast and expect you to understand where the f**k they are talking about. Somehow everyone has started to talk like a tourism advertisement as in visit the Central Coast: “a stones throw from Sydney, a million miles from a care in the world.” I don’t know about that. It was a congested drive up and back, there was noisy and polluting piston powered craft everywhere, the cafes were full of jostling people on the downward slide of their last sugar fix and some dude in the campsite had thumping music going all day and half the night. Other than that, I guess it was carefree.

The first day we paddled from Ettalong to Maitland Bay. I had borrowed the “other half’s” waterproof camera but somehow, at the start of the day, I managed to set it on super-macro so everything was blurry. Plus, I realised there was no float or string attached and I instantly became paranoid that I would drop the camera into the briny blue and lose not only a camera but a relationship. The end result being I have no photos at all. There might be some on NSW Sea Kayak Club Facebook page but I don’t have a Facebook account so I couldn’t tell you.

We launched from Ettalong Beach at the narrowest part of Brisbane Waters and I think it was exactly mid-tide as the tidal current was running in surprisingly fast. There was some instruction to “ferry glide” across but, judging by some of the approaches I witnessed, many sea kayakers may not actually understand the concept of the ferry glide; although a ferry glide is about the first thing that whitewater paddlers learn and is a useful skill for sea kayakers.

Once across to the east side of Broken Bay we followed the short sandstone cliffs of Little Box Head and then Box Head. There was a lot of rebound off Box Head and other paddlers told me it is hard to ever get in close although it would be grand if you could. We passed two beaches, Tallow and Putty, neither of which would have been an easy landing this day. The swell, I think, was in the 1.5 metre range but with a greater than 10 second period. It’s been a long time (last summer) since I practised rolling so I did not need any encouragement to stay well away from Maitland Bombora.

Apparently, back in 2008, there was a big “incident” at Maitland Bombora where three out of five kayakers ended up in the water after getting caught in a big wave on the bommie. As is often the case with these incidents, particularly in long standing tribal groups like clubs, the event has permeated group consciousness and become a shared memory even if you were not there on the day.

Maitland Bay is fairly well protected by the reef off Boudi Point and the bombora, so the landing was only difficult in that the swell was quite surgey (not actually a word according to my spell check) on a steep beach and there were 15 kayakers coming into land all trying to tuck into the most sheltered eastern corner. We had a long and social break with lots of laughing. I think everyone is really enjoying being able to socialise again after the mentally damaging lock-downs we’ve all lived through in the last couple of years. Hopefully that incendiary statement is not enough to get this blog banned but anything is possible in the era of “misinformation” (which is the leftie term for “alternative facts”).

After our break, I had a very civilised push/pull out from the men in the group. They tell me this is the way things are done on the Central Coast. I usually avoid any sort of assistance unless I absolutely require it as one really must be pretty self-sufficient to paddle on the open sea, but when in Rome, or on the Central Coast, and I certainly could get used to such treatment although I do not expect it back on the rough and tumble of the south coast.

It was a pleasant paddle back, slower than on the way out as is usual with groups, but I don’t think anyone felt in any kind of rush. The “million miles from a care in the world” was definitely missing when we got back to Ettalong Beach which was packed out with jet skis driven dangerously, ferry traffic, and sundry power boats surging past. The Central Coast is a lot busier than the south coast.

Next day we launched from Patonga Beach opposite the pub/cafe. This was a busy location. I am pretty convinced the reason most Australians leave home is simply to go eat at a cafe or pub somewhere as the place was certainly hopping with cars cruising up and down hoping to park exactly across the road. If you think about it, this explains the shape of 70% of Australians which is under-muscled and over-fat. Don’t get mad, get fit, these are real statistics.

Two of the women on the trip had actually followed my old ‘gramme account which I deleted a couple of years ago when I purged the last of my social media accounts. I feel a healthier person for it. Social media seems to be mostly about comparison (remember that quote about comparison being the thief of joy) and commercialisation. I do not miss it.

We paddled over to Lion Island, which has a small beach but landing is prohibited. Around the north side past some more sandstone cliffs and then south across Broken Bay to Barrenjoey Head. I would like to walk around on Barrenjoey Head, I think there may even be some rock climbing up there. The headland is connected to the mainland only by a narrow isthmus of sand (although there are roads and structures built on the isthmus) which you have to think will wash away one day in a big east coast low. That will be something to see and a delightful reminder that man is impermanent.

There were a few Australian Long Nosed Fur Seals (isn’t Duck Duck Go a wonderful thing) laying about on rocks on the western end of Barrenjoey Head as we crossed over to West Head which is in Ku-ring Gai Chase National Park. We pottered along heading west to a little beach called Hungry Beach for morning tea. From Hungry Beach it was only a couple of kilometres back to Patonga Beach with the group slowing down again.

I had a long drive back to the southern side of Sydney looming over me but I had also spent a lot of time in the last couple of days either sitting in a car or sitting in a kayak, so I put my sneakers on and walked east from the parking lot – still people trying to find parking spots exactly opposite the cafe – to Dark Corner Track (a bit of a weird name for a track uphill through some woods) to Warrah Lookout and Warrah Trig. This is part of the Great North Walk and is one of those absurdities that National Parks appears to find completely normal whereby some tracks are pretty much completely paved and others, like those in the Budawangs, never see a scrap of maintenance and disappear after major bushfires. Lovely views from Warrah Lookout and along the track and on the way back I passed a group of folks at the base of the Dark Corner Track reading bible scripture. Perhaps the track name is in reference to Satan. I don’t know, but that statement also is probably liable to result in some kind of censorship.

Man Splaining Inspiration

There is no such thing as inspiration. Sure, there are memes and bill-boards, and influencers, and even professionals whose entire raison d'etre is inspiration but in the real world of getting shit done, inspiration is virtually worthless. The only things that matter are grit and enough inner desire to work hard and sacrifice. Inspiration is as transient as a fart in an elevator.

Why am I writing – yet again – about inspiration? It’s not the first time, unlikely to be the last; last night I was on a Zoom call with four men. Count them up, four humans with the XY sex chromosomes and one (me) with the XX chromosomes. We were talking about speakers/instructors for an upcoming event. There was a lot of talk about inspiration. Best thing you can do when someone starts talking about inspiration is simply let it wash over you like waves in the surf. Duck your head when the talk gets really turbulent, come back up into the green smooth conversation on the other side. People who believe in inspiration are generally kind hearted souls but don’t really understand that inspiration does not get you up at 4.30 am to carry a monstrous pack up into the mountains across sketchy terrain or send you out onto the dark ocean on a 70 kilometre crossing.

The men all thought that getting a female instructor would be great. A human with XX chromosomes to connect with the other XX chromosomes and inspire them to be better at the sport, to try harder, to do great things. I had my head down because, as I said above, the most sensible thing to do when the inspirators get going is to put your head down, don’t come up until the discussion has moved on to more concrete plans. At some point, I thought, maybe the men would ask the woman for her opinion. Of course, I have an opinion, I’ve written about my pink era, and my view, despite hearing the same arguments multiple times has not changed. Chromosomes in this matter are unimportant. Inspiration does not work.