Apparently this video has “gone viral”, but I only saw it today. If you haven’t seen it, well it is pretty funny, although not for the squeamish. Rock climbing isn’t always glamorous!

Oh and I’d like to point out this is absolutely nothing like the climbing trips I go on!

Boogie ’til You Poop from Cedar Wright on Vimeo.

So it seems I’m nearly 6 months behind writing blog entries, which pretty much sums up my state of organisation these days.

But anyway, back in May we went to the Collector pumpkin festival, they had giant pumpkins and donuts and bratwurst and all the good things, including quilts.

We drove up in Meg’s mum’s new car which was cool, and on the way back we could see the wind turbines across Lake George. You can always see them I guess, but it seems I’m normally driving so I’ve never really had a good look at them.

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As usual I’m reporting on events in the deep deep dark distant past, but better late than never I guess. It was April apparently, actually it was Easter I think, and we headed up to the Blue Mountains with Andrew & Penny for some excellent climbing.

We spent Friday at Shipley Upper, doing most of the climbs on the Grey Slabs, we particularly liked one on the far left, Country Special (19) I think. I top roped Lardy Lady’s Lats (22) which was great, after Penny kindly put it up. We also did Jack High (19) which was not bad, although I had Lars or Julien nearly fall on me from the corner on Flaming Flamingo.

After a great sunset and a top pasta cook up we hit the sack, ready for another day. On Saturday we headed to Mt Piddington, for a bit of trad climbing. Meg & I started with the super easy Faith (8) and I think we also did Chastity (14) and Hope (15). In the meantime Andrew lead the much more committing Tombstone Wall (15) just around the corner.

Having had enough of cracks I started up the slabby Sincerity (13), noticing that the guide said “much harder (22?) if you do the final moves” (as opposed to moving right into the crack). Of course I decided I was good enough to do the final moves, and had nearly stuck it when I fell, probably from a metre above the bolt. With the rope stretch I probably fell 2½m, and caught my toe on a ledge, yanking my ankle upward. Ouch!

I felt OK after a minute or two’s swearing, and managed to get to the top and belay Meg up. By the time we’d rappelled back down it was feeling fine, so I thought I was good to go. Later I would realise that this was a false, adrenaline fueled, recovery.

While we’d been enjoying ourselves around the corner, Andrew & Penny’s mates John & Justine had arrived and had been busily climbing routes. Justine led Eternity (18), and then after a bit of egging-on Andrew did too. Penny had climbed something else to the top and got a great sequence of shots of Andrew leading.

After we’d had a bit of lunch Meg was talked into top-roping Eternity, and absolutely cruised up it. Not to be out done I had a go too, and although I didn’t have any major trouble by the time I got down my ankle was hurting a fair bit. Oops!

The walk out is a good couple of kms, and a fair climb, and with only one foot it got a bit interesting! I managed to hobble it, with the assistance of a few sticks, and some pack carrying from the group. Not wanting to miss out on the fun I managed to hobble into the pub for dinner. What a great weekend!

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Here’s a couple of panorama shots from Tassie. Click them for the super enormous original versions.

Sunrise at Shelf Camp

Cradle Mountain Panorama

Ever since our Europe trip in 2008, and perhaps before, we’ve been planning on getting canvas prints done of some of our photos. After much deliberation, and quite a large amount of procrastination we finally picked four shots to get made into prints.

They came out really nicely, the photo quality is great. The Eiger shot is a little dark, but we kind of knew that. The framing is really nice, they are quite deep, and the photo wraps around which looks really cool.

We have three along one wall in the lounge room, and the fourth on the opposite wall, they look pretty tops – in contrast to the rest of our mess 🙂

And although we haven’t worked out the details, some of one or more of them are a late birthday and/or Christmas present for Meg & I, thanks to Mum & Dad!

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Back in March we headed down to Nowra & Point Perp for a weekend with the ANUMC. We drove down Friday night, camping at Honeymoon Bay, Saturday we headed to Point Perp.

I haven’t been to the Point for a few years, and it took a bit of getting used to. After having a look around for something easy & non-committing (ha!), we started with some easy top ropes. I think we did Over the Yard Arm (14) and Ground Swell (16), which were both nice. Anya kindly took heaps of photos of me on Ground Swell, some of which came out pretty nicely.

After lunch we walked down to T-shirt gulley, and did an easy 10 or 11 crack on gear. It was probably only 10 meters, and the climbing was super easy, but it was still nice to get used to placing gear there – the rock is a bit peculiar. Thanks to Adam for lending me some of his gear.

On Sunday we packed up camp and drove to Thompson’s Point. We started with The Money or the Box (19), which was really nice. As we roped up we were visited by a pair of little marsupial mice (I think), which were super cute.

Some of the other guys were hanging at Vanderholics with a cool lizard, so I got some cool shots of him. He’s totally giving me the eye.

After lunch I tried Sloth (16), but convinced myself I was going to fall clipping one of the bolts and bailed, mind games.

To round out the weekend we did a cavey 14 which I think was Lounge Lizard, and then the lovely Santa’s Little Helper (15) back at the descent gully walls. Somehow that took all day and we ended up driving home into a setting sun, still a good trip though.

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2009 was the year of not many holidays for Meg and I. That was sort of OK after our two month trip to Europe in 2008, but it still made the year feel like a bit of a long haul. One of the lights at the end of the tunnel was the promise of a whole month in Tassie at the start of 2010!

Originally we’d thought we’d do the Overland Track, but the logistics turned us off, mainly the fact that getting back to our car from the end would have taken two days on a bus. That left us with a completely open schedule, which was really nice, although as the trip progressed we penciled in more things so by the end it was jam packed.

We began by driving to Melbourne and staying with my lovely cousins, who put us up for the night and didn’t mind too much when we had to leave at 6:30am on a Sunday in order to get to the ferry.

After driving from Devonport to Launceston we spent a couple of days taking it easy, breakfasting at the awesome Fresh cafe, doing a bit of climbing at Cataract Gorge, swimming at first basin and lounging in the sun – it was really warm.

With the weather looking dicey we headed to Freycinet, where the weather was really dicey, and climbed Mt Amos in low cloud and winds. We spent a day doing not too much, other than a trip to Bicheno, to wait out the weather. Once the worst of the rain had passed we started the Freycinet circuit, and were rewarded with three days of great weather, in particular a stunning day for our summit of Mt Graham.

After resupplying in Hobart we spent a night in Dover before climbing Hartz Peak in awesome weather, and then driving back through the lovely Huon valley to the Tasman peninsula. There we enjoyed the excellent restaurant just near the camp ground, and did the day walk out to Cape Raoul. The rain forecast for that week never really came, though we had a bit of cloud and a few sprinkles.

We wanted to spend a weekend in Hobart so after a detour to the Cadbury factory we setup in a great hotel in Battery Point, walking distance to the city. On Friday night we caught the very cool Rectango, a free gig held every week in a courtyard behind Salamanca. Saturday was obviously spent at the Salamanca markets, and then wandering around town. On Sunday the weather dampened our climbing plans, but we had a climb at Hobart’s indoor wall instead which was quite good.

Week three began with a trip up Mt Wellington for the view, then the long, by Tassie standards, drive out to the Edgar dam campground in the south west. After one night there, punctuated by an awesome sunset, and the presence of 30 odd hippies, we started the walk up Mt Eliza and eventually to shelf camp. Our plans to climb Mt Anne the next day were thwarted by low cloud which blew in just at sunrise, but it was still an awesome walk.

Having come down from Mt Anne early we drove straight to Lake St Clair, and the next day started a three day walk there. We camped at Pine Valley for two nights and climbed the Acropolis, spending a couple of hours on the summit in brilliant weather.

On the day we walked out of Pine Valley we drove to Launceston, past the Great Lake, and refueled with excellent steaks at the Jailhouse Grill. We’d planned to spend a day climbing at Hillwood, but when we arrived we found it smoking, still burning after a bush fire the previous day. The firies politely asked us to stay away, for our own safety, and we agreed, especially after they started preemptively felling trees.

Our final adventure for the trip was a three day hike at Cradle Mountain. It began in fine but freezing weather after a day of heavy  rain. We climbed Cradle Mountain, and spent a full day climbing Barn Bluff from our base at Scott Kilvert hut. Once again we were blessed with excellent weather, though it did get below freezing overnight which was a bit of a shock!

All in all it was a great trip, and even though it was only a month it felt like a lot longer while we were there, the days don’t go by so fast when you’re out doing things. Although we saw many of the best bits of Tassie, there’s so much down there we’ll have to do another trip, one day!

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Went and saw Ross Noble last night, as funny as ever. He was on for over 2 1/2 hours, and at least half the show was just improv, pretty amazing 🙂

A couple of nice pics of the wildlife at Nowra on the weekend, climbing photos coming later 🙂

A friendly lizard that sat and watched.

A little mouse that hung out with us.

Back in January Meg & I spent a few days in Adelaide to catch up with her extended family. We had a really nice time, meeting in my case, or catching up with, all her relies on her Dad’s side. There was lots of nice food, a few beers, backyard cricket and board games.

In between all the get-togethers we managed to sneak off and watch some of the Tour Down Under – which for bike weenies like us was a real treat.

It was a bit hot some days, standing beside the road waiting for the race, and driving around trying to catch the peloton was a bit stressful at times – but it was still really good fun, more than I thought it would be in fact. We will have to see a stage of the Tour de France one day.

I took a few photos, mainly just shot from chest level without looking through the view finder as the riders went past – hence a few cut off heads and so on. Still I got good pics of Mick Rogers, Lance Armstrong, André Greipel (who won), big Jens Voigt, Robbie McKewen, Cadel Evans (world champion – rainbow jersey), and Stuey O’Grady amoungst others.

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