I had the coolest day climbing yesterday, I went along to this new crag about an hour outside Melbourne called Weribee Gorge with Belinda from SA and Nick who's from Belgium. Man I love Australia, the day before it was a real cool and misty rainy Irish day so got some Christmass shopping and almost felt like I was in Dublin without a woolen hat and big jacket, but next day when I woke up it was sunny and everything was bone dry and ready for climbing :D We had such a fun day climbing in the sun and I remembered sun tan lotion so got a bit of a tan too. This it the way December is supposed to be.
I hoped onto this 22 um 6c+ and flashed it!!! Thats the hardest grade I've flashed :D Funny thing is that the route is called Tina, the ballerina from Pasedina, so I think my technique is getting better, its a really balancy crimpy use your feet route. Belinda was thrilled when she made it further on top rope than any of the other guys did. Then after a rest I hoped onto this 23 right next to it and its such a fun route, [sorry to the non climbers, this makes sence if you know climbing jargen, I'm not going nuts ;) ] crimps crimps crimps, flake undercling crrimps crimps, pinch the arete, I'm not pumped, yip, crimps, not pumped, clip crimp crimp and clip, ok this is sustained, where is the crux, clip almost at the top, oh yeah nice smear, then CRUX!, okay reachy bear hug with crimp round the corner and pinch the arete and stand up on this tiny foot hold? to reach past this sloper that (NO! you're just imagining being pumped) you thought was a jug to this okay hold, forget the gear is 2/3m below now find this horible flat hold on the arete and work my, oh crap, "TAKE ME!!!!" Winger of note and 6m later I'm looking up going, DAMIT I was only 1m from flashing a 7a!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good planning and fantastic belaying meant that all I got was some air ;) so hopefully I'll be back again next week to do it properly. Belinda you're an awesome belayer!
Okay, so Melbourne has a few disadvantages, I had to get up at 5 in the morning to watch the world cup and I'm not a morning person. Turns out it was the best way to start the day and we did it in style.
For those of you that don't know I have to set the scene. I'm staying with my cousin in a block of appartments in the Docklands here in Melbourne, and its an amazing place with a sea view, and there's another appartment block right next to ours. So I got up early to watch the game with the sliding doors open to let the sea breeze in cause its getting quite warm here. Anyway, fantastic game to show off what a great team we have at the moment, I spent most of the game standing up screaming at the TV and could hear some other South Africans doing the same somewhere else in the building. England might have Johnny Wilkonson, but we got Percy, Styne, Habana and the rest of the team, so we showed them how to play a kicking game. The game went the way I was afraid it would, a kicking game, and the English games have so far in the world cup been boring games to watch, but the Springboks showed them how to play a kicking game, GO BOKS!!!! We definatly deserved that win.
When the final whistle blew me and the other South Africans who were watching went nuts, screaming and whistling and cheering on the team. So I went out to the balcony to call down to the other fans and turns out the guys were just below me. Then coming out of about 5 different appartments in the other building were more South Africans and we starting cheering at each other over the void and more South Africans came out of other hiding places in our building and a guy on the corner came out waving on the Bokke glory with his South African Flag. Anyone who was out for their morning run walking between the buildings was caught in the cross fire and joined in the celebrations, by now the Ozzies were being woken up wondering what was going on, my neighbor came out onto his balcony half asleep and asked me what was going on and the lady directly above me popped her head over the balcony to say congrats.
It was AMAZING and a very pround moment to be a South African.
We cheered them on and woke up all the ozzies doing it!!!
"Having completed this route, if I had to give up climbing tomorrow due to some disaster, I'd be satisfied with my effort. It's the first time I've ever felt that. Climbing it has confirmed in my mind something I felt for the first time after climbing Rhapsody; We can really do anything, and I mean anything we want. Circumstances are indeed barriers, but never impenetrable ones. We are limited only by knowing exactly what we want and having the pure motivation to find it. I always heard this idea from 'motivational types' in the past. As a sceptic I've spent over ten years trying to refute it by repeatedly trying seemingly impossible projects. Every time the result is the same – Tasks you are not truly motivated for may always remain beyond your reach, tasks you are deeply motivated for take you on a long and convoluted route around the barriers that circumstances create. Sometimes, in the thick of the maze of circumstances, you realise your motivation is not deep enough and its best to try something else. But when the motivation remains through deep frustration, the results are always… always… just around the corner.
Went to the Irish pub in town last night with a group of Irish friends including the Marnane Bros, just missing Micheal, think he said something about jet lag. Found this printed onto one of the roof beams
Took a rest day from snowboarding and went climbing at Hospital Flats with Mel. It was sooo warm and sunny, it wasn't just not cold, it was actually warm! It was so nice chilling in the warm sunshine climbing a few routes with Treble Cone ski resort at the top of the snowcapped peaks in the background. I love the climbing here, it was so much fun. There isn't that many realy hard routes that I could see from a quick glance at the guide book, one or 2 extremely hard ones, but that doesn't matter, you don't need them. Walking up to the first crag from the car park I felt like a kid in the candy store, I was looking at tonnes of different lines that looked like so much fun to climb. My favourite that I got to try that day was this route up the arete of the "Tombstone" A massive 15/20m high boulder that looks like a tombstone. Sean, Carole and Julie-Anne joined us later with their cameras and being a rest day they decided to be the paparatsi or however you spell that.
I love this photo that Carole got. Thats me on my favourite route in NZ (so far)
Conquer Your Fears, Live your Dreams
