The Best of the Best or The Dullest of the Dull

The typical person is more risk averse than opportunity hungry. Jordan Peterson.

In 2005, when my Mum was 73, we walked up the Kaslo Lake trail to the comfortable Kokanee Glacier Hut on the shore of Kaslo Lake at an altitude of about 2000 metres. The trail, which is about 9 or 10 kilometres long starts down at Gibson Lake at an altitude of about 1560 metres and wanders up through switchbacks, some steep scree and boulder patches, and eventually some lovely alpine flower filled meadows to Kokanee Pass where it trends gradually downhill past a series of small lakes and tarns to Kaslo Lake. We stayed in the hut for two nights, walking to Sapphire Lakes and Glory Basin on the second day. While Mum rested at the cabin after each days walk, I’d head out and sprint up one of the surrounding ridges before returning to have afternoon tea with Mum who I had left sitting comfortably in the cabin with a book and some snacks.

Skiers on Kalso Lake in Winter

My Mum loved the alpine country of Canada and was, on this trip, made much of by the other hikers in the hut because they could not believe that my Mum, 50 years their senior, had walked in to the cabin carrying her own gear in a backpack on her back. I’m not cruel, I carried most of the load and my Mum carried just her usual day pack. But, Mum was still over 70 and had a number of years earlier had a laminectomy and spinal fusion due to vertebral collapse secondary to osteoporosis. And, she has bad osteoporosis, her spine has literally crumbled.

Sapphire Lakes area in winter

Five years later, in 2010, Doug and I had a week climbing in the Melville Group in the Selkirk Mountains of BC, with a rag-tag bunch of other climbers (I was the sole female). Half of us flew directly to a camp by a glacial lake at the base of the Houston Glacier while the other half were dropped off at a place colloquially known as Noranda Flats (the site of some old mining exploration) an alpine area at the head of Butters Creek and just below Pequod Pass. The second half of our group traversed from Noranda Flats to our Houston Lake camp via the Pequod Glacier after a couple of days climbing peaks accessible from Noranda Flats.

Climbing Mount Ahab out of Noranda Flats, PC: DB

This entailed crossing the Pequod Glacier which we had actually done the year before as Doug, myself and another climbing buddy had spent a week climbing out of Noranda Flats in 2009. The Pequod Glacier is a hideously crevassed and steep glacier that descends sharply from 9,000 feet to 7,000 feet in under a kilometre. Navigating it is no easy feat and involves crossing dodgy snow-bridges and weaving around bottomless crevasses while carrying full backpacks with food, camping and climbing gear. The Noranda Flats party was made up of three guys, including 76 year old Bert, who, a day or two after crossing the Pequod Glacier led the rock pitches (Ewbank 14) up Escalade Peak, which itself was the day after a grand slam day climbing Redburn, White Jacket, Proteus and Harpoon (yes, four peaks).

Climbing Harpoon, PC: DB

But what is the point of both of these stories, well, they are pretty average, ordinary stories. I wrote both of the Melville climbing trips up for Bivouac.com. The first, from 2009, got three recommendations, the second, from 2010, got one. The trip with my Mum to the Kaslo Lake hut was too ordinary to write up anywhere, so the only way I know what year it was is because it is in our personal trip database. I’ve got some photos, and some scant memories of the climbing, but not even much memory of the exact climbing routes as I climbed to the summits of hundreds of mountains when I lived in Canada. The stories are – to be honest – mediocre. And there’s nothing wrong with that. For most of us, our lives are a series of mediocre interludes interspersed with the average life events that happen to all of us. I’ve even written a piece in praise of mediocrity.

Doug on one of our new routes, PC: H.Mutch

What I don’t understand about mediocrity is why it interests anyone? A friend sent me a video the other day of some bloke in a too big hat on a ALL CAPITALS – SOLO REMOTE BIKE AND HIKE. It’s a 30 plus minute video which I didn’t watch because it’s boring and mediocre, and, if that’s not enough, the REMOTE place is a couple of hours easy walk from the parking lot. I think it’s great that this bloke in the big hat loves where he lives and goes out into nature, but I’m inspired by radical stuff not mediocrity. I’ve got a truck load of my own mediocrity.

One of Hamish's routes, PC: DB

Sometimes I wonder if it is the end stage of DEI where we celebrate diversity and identity and downplay actually trying hard and being good at something. Which is not to say you have to be anything other than mediocre because 99% of us are mediocre, but I sure would like to see society elevate the best of the best rather than the dullest of the dull.

Grace

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. William Shakespeare.

I walked along the MunjipTrack this morning. It was windy and storm clouds were scudding across the horizon, but, out on the Tollgate Islands, a beam of bright sunlight shone down upon the wave strewn ocean, a message, to even to the most pragmatic and least spiritual among us, that hope always returns to human hearts.

Some people have words for the year, some mantras to keep going in dark and difficult times; when loss comes, as it does to all humans, I think about what that one person taught me across their life. Grace is a hard word to define and means so many things to so many different people. Grace is the ability to sit with who we are in stillness and silence without the need to distract ourselves from dark moments or equally joyful moments. Grace allows us to forgive ourselves, but more importantly others as we each conceive of ourselves as centres of the universe whilst in reality we are so many small and transient creatures spinning around glued by gravity to this strange and beautiful blue green planet beneath a twinkling night sky.

Go with grace.

The Significance of Ten

I don’t know that ten really means anything except as a base for the decimal system, but there’s something compelling about things that come in ten. On the tenth of January, I took the kayak down to the beach – empty thanks to the steady rain – and paddled south to practice some surf landings. Ten surf landings, of course. On my first run into the beach, I thought the swell is too small to count, but as I sat in the whitewater zone looking for a break to paddle back out, I saw that the waves were over my head and so qualify as “surf to 1.0 metre.”

It has been tough training for an assessment alone. I have no-one to run scenarios or act as a crash test dummie for rescues, so I’ve been doing my best running scenarios in my head and working on my own paddle skills. On January 5^th, half of ten, Doug and I went paddling, just paddling, out to North Head into a northerly wind and then the sprint to come back catching runners. I caught lots of runners. It’s the tenth of January and I’ve got eight days to go – providing the conditions cooperate.

A Story of Three Paddles

A wing, a stick (Greenland) and a Euro went out for a paddle, who was fastest? If you consider only forwards paddling, the wing should beat the Euro which should beat the stick. In practice, the Euro beat the stick which beat the wing. I am most assuredly not an expert on paddles or even the basic forward stroke, but, my observations lead me to think that many folks paddling with a wing blade would be far better off with a Euro blade. Certainly, if you aren’t fast with a wing, you probably aren’t getting the benefits of the wing.

A friend of mine, with a good forward stroke, has done some comparative tests between wing and Euro blades, she is perhaps 10% (it’s hard to quantify) faster with a wing blade. That’s all good, and, if I capsize, I would really like to have a wing blade in my hands because the sweep roll is so easy with a wing as the paddle just seems to automatically have a nice climbing angle and give lots of support. My flat blade dives if I don’t have it in exactly the right angle and I end up muscling up the roll. The sad truth, however is, that like most kayakers, the most obvious place for me to capsize is in the surf and I never use a wing blade in the surf. Wing blades, despite what the aficionados of wing blades say, are not much good for anything but forward paddling. It’s desperately hard to rudder with a wing or brace into a wave; both of those things are pretty much mandatory in the surf.

For the next little while, I’ve put my wing blade away and am paddling with a Euro blade. It was awkward at first and I felt really slow, especially in wind, but, the more hours you accumulate, the better you get (within in reason, you can’t just reinforce a shit stroke), and I’m finally at the stage of being comfortable with the Euro blade even in head winds and sprinting to catch runners. Sure, both of those things would be easier with the wing blade, and, at some point I’ll go back, but for now, the Euro is my paddle of choice.

Into The Movement Tunnel

Summer northeasterlies interrupted by southerly changes driven by cold fronts is pretty much the story of an average south coast NSW summer. Yesterday, the northerly winds were gusty but not continuous in our little bay, occasionally blowing enough to move the kayaks rapidly across the water, but mostly not too strong. The southerly change came in early, before 10 am. I trolleyed the kayak down to the water before breakfast to practice some of the skills I have been learning via Online Sea Kayaking. As usual, I was dreading the first dunking even though I was actually feeling a bit hot in my sea kayaking kit. The coaches on OSK frequently exhort the students/viewers get wet to take away any lingering apprehension so I did a few rolls before beginning any skill practice. The water felt cold and I ended up putting a long john wetsuit on even though I always feel kind of stiff and clunky in a wetsuit.

Doug came down later and was kind enough to film my attempts at low and high recoveries and also a few rolls. I can actually roll quite well and only muff up when I think about what I am doing. But, I make the same mistake every year: I think about all the little tweaks I could make to change my successful roll into a dance of pure perfection and end up clunky and stiff and even blowing my first attempts so I have to set up all over again to roll up. While this is good for practising hanging about upside down without panicking it never seems to change my successful roll into a roll of such elegance that other beach goers swoon. I should learn that getting up is really all that matter.

It’s really instructive to video your performance as so often you feel like you’ve got something really nailed and then you look at the video and see that – like me in these photos – your arms and elbows are all in the wrong places and you haven’t even set up appropriately! Kelly Starrett used to talk about the “movement tunnel” and the importance of setting up correctly before starting the movement. It’s a good analogy, as a train that is not on the train tracks is going nowhere and certainly cannot run smoothly through a tunnel.

Merry Christmas From the Last 12 Years

I always say, “we always do something fun on Christmas day,” and then I looked back through our database to see what exactly we did on “this day in history” since arriving in Australia in 2012. Here is the chronological list:

2012: My first normal/average Christmas in three decades spent at my brothers house on the Georges River. Although it wasn’t completely normal because I paddled there from Woronora in a sea kayak and Doug paddled home. We had my Mum with us and only two kayaks so one person drew the short straw and had to drive! I’m pretty sure Doug and I went swimming in the Georges River which is fun when the tide is running fast because you could jump off my brothers jetty and swim comfortably staying in place as the current ran by. We left Sydney on Boxing Day for our first big Australian road trip.

2013: We were house sitting in Cairns over the sweat season and camped up at Davies Creek with some Cairns friends. We rock-hopped along Davies Creek and went swimming.

2014: Our worst Christmas. We were living in our caravan and were beginning the tradition of house-sitting somewhere over the Christmas holidays. The Christmas holidays are mad in Australia and the best thing to do is travel nowhere. We had a house sit organised in Wonthaggi but it fell apart on Christmas Day and Doug and I left Wonthaggi to drive to Sydney and spent Christmas night in our caravan in a free campsite somewhere in blasting heat. A bit grim.

2015: We were house-sitting in Wodonga and went down to the Murray River to swim. It was hot, but the house-sit was quite good as it was within walking distance of Macdonald Hill and some nice reserves where you could walk all over the hills.

2016: We walked the Bingie Bingie Track from Bingie Bingie Point to Coila Lake and went swimming. It was hot and we were house-sitting in Moruya.

2017: I ran all around Mount Alexandra in the southern highlands from the house-sit we had near the top of Mount Gibraltar.

2018: Mike, Doug and I paddled from Bermagui to Hidden Valley for a lovely couple of days. It can be hard to land at Hidden Valley but we had excellent conditions.

2019: Doug and I paddled to Nelligen from our house to have Christmas lunch with Rose and Mike at Mike’s place on the Clyde River. It was a long paddle and I was suitably tired at the end of the day. We missed the tide in both directions.

2020: Doug and I paddled north from our home bay to a secret little cove on the Murramarang Coast for a lovely night of camping. Fifty four kilometres in two days which seemed like a lot in the days before I started training for Bass Strait and paddled 54 kilometres in one day.

2021: We had a rest day! We were in the midst of training for Bass Strait and we had spent Christmas eve out in the bush doing trail work in the blistering heat.

2022: Another two day trip paddling north from our home bay to a different little cove on the Murramarang Coast.

2023: We were in the middle of training for south west Tasmania and were paddling a lot. As a change of pace we did a lovely low tide walk around the rock platforms from our home bay.

2024: Surfing on the Batemans Bay bar. This can be good when there is a big swell which gets all the way into the Bay. Yesterday was such a day. I was practising leaning and ruddering at the same time which for me is a bit like walking and chewing gum. We paddled back into a headwind, current and big standing waves going out the channel. Interesting conditions which made the day quite fun.

Planning Is Easy

We brewed more tea and poured it into one litre measuring cups. Barry Blanchard. The Calling: A Life Rocked by Mountains.

You might think you have experienced cold winter nights but, unless you’ve lived in Calgary, Alberta in the early 1990’s when the arctic cold fronts blow down from the Canadian north, the temperatures plummet to minus 40 Celsius and the scant snow underfoot becomes so dry and hard that it squeaks like Styrofoam under your snow boots, you have not really known cold. It was on such a night, that I first learnt the benefit of pausing and brewing up when circumstances seem dire. Doug Scott was on a world tour recounting, among other stories, his heroic crawl down The Ogre in Pakistan after falling and breaking both ankles. In Scott’s stories epic adventures were interspersed with mugs of freshly brewed tea. The ritual of tea making a necessary adjuvant to the otherwise haphazard risk management strategies employed by brash young climbers intent on making a mark in the high stakes world of high altitude alpinism.

I’ve been working my way through the lessons and courses available through Online Sea Kayaking (OSK) and thinking a lot about risk evaluation, planning and leadership of kayak groups. I’ve also thought a lot about what I now call “the Five Islands Incident.” Not ruminating, which is mostly unproductive; instead thinking about what is the best way to approach such paddling situations in the future.

What I’ve come to realise about the Five Islands incident is that there really was no “risk assessment” as most outdoor leaders would define “risk assessment.” There was a plan, but no risk assessment. A risk assessment has to identify potential hazards, the likelihood of encountering the potential hazard(s), and the consequences of such an occurrence. Once you start thinking about hazards it’s virtually automatic to then begin thinking in terms of risk mitigation strategies. No sensible person says “Well, I might die but what the fark; after all YOLO!’

PC: Nick B.

I’ve thought a lot about what risk mitigation strategies we could have implemented in the Five Islands incident. Certainly, a more thorough assessment of the paddle plan was indicated: how often was the feature completely closing out, how big were the swells, how long was the period, was there lateral movement of white water towards rocks or reefs, which way was the water flowing, if a paddler was overpowered by waves or capsized where would they end up and could we effect a rescue, was there a possibility of paddling through the feature one at a time while maintaining line of sight with the exposed paddlers? Is paddling through one at a time even the best option? Could we position one paddler on either side of the feature to act as a lookout/rescuer? Did each individual in the group have the necessary skill, fitness and ability to manage a bigger than average wave? Was the risk even worth the benefit?

PC: DB

These are all the things to sit and discuss with a paddling mate over a mug of freshly brewed tea, but that’s not practical on a day out sea kayaking – nothing would get done. It seems imperative however, that paddlers who talk about having “completed a risk assessment” have actually assessed risk not merely planned a route. Planning is easy the part. It is execution which is hard and the only thing that really matters.