Saturday, showers turning to rain and Sunday, rain turning to showers.

But sometimes you have to take the chance. SOOO, we drove up on Friday night and Saturday was perrrrfect for climbing: 23/24C and overcast. A few teeeny showers came through but not enough to wet the rock. They became more frequent as we camped on Saturday night and at about 1am the real rain came. And it kept coming. We woke up after not much sleep to find we were camped on a sheet of moving water, bubbles zooming under the floor of the tent. The rock was never going to dry out even if it stopped within the hour so we packed up and drove out to Stawell, where we found a roadhouse and stuffed ourselves with coffee and eggs to fuel us up for the drive home. It is a pretty long drive for one day, but Saturday was such a rad day that it was totally worth it.

Today,  I read that Melbourne is set for the hottest start to November since 1902. It feels more like January than November right now. It reached 35.2C today and as I write this, at 9:30pm, it has yet to drop below 30C. The weekend was a little hotter than I expected, though we still did plenty of climbing. Saturday, although getting an early start, we felt the heat as we climbed in the sun until past lunchtime. Later in the afternoon we found a quiet shady spot and flailed up some short pitches. When we were done climbing it took several litres of fluid, some salts and and a lie-down to feel slightly normal again. Totally worth it, though!

Sunday, we rose even earlier and were rewarded by almost empty Organ Pipes. We ticked a classic and though the cliffs were still empty (everyone sensible was sleeping or in the shade) and it was still early,  we decided that even shady routes would be too much effort and instead retreated to boulder problems on the shady sides of the Pharoes. We watched some climbers make multiple raps down in the vicious afternoon sun. We repeated some easy problems and then flailed about on the crux move of our project until the sun moved onto the holds and we called it a day.

The fact that it has been a good spring for farmers in abundantly obvious. The view from Mt. Arapiles is typically comprised of of brown and yellow dust and salt pans. Right now the lakes are full of water and the wheat and canola are green and healthy. Unfortunately, all this unexpected abundance of water is providing breeding ground for gazillions of mosquitoes. Luckily, while you are leading, you forget about the buzzing, biting hell of the base of the cliff but when you reach the belay ledge and are waiting for your partner to second, all you hear is the sound of climbers slapping and cussing :)

Squeaky Beach has a small collection of granite boulders with a range of angles and different-sized holds. There are crack problems, mantling problems, juggy problems, crimpy problems and slabby problems.  There isn’t so much that is is worth a dedicated trip, but there are enough lines, ranging from warm-up to hard, to pass an afternoon if you are in the area. Almost all have a flat sandy landing and, of course, the scenery is stunning and you can cool down by playing in the surf.

It’s late autumn now, with perfect temperatures (warm enough to climb, cool enough to keep the hordes of tourists away). If the rain stays away it is a great time to visit. I only wish I’d taken my shoes. Instead I was limited to lines easy enough for my runners.

On Sunday we went for a walk around the You Yangs Regional Park and climbing area. I have never been there before. It’s a granite area – most of the climbing in this part of Australia is sandstone – and relatively close to the city. It is also a bit less busy than the more famous areas and while it doesn’t have either the quality or the quantity of routes and boulders of the Arapiles or the Grampians, it is good to test yourself on different rock from time to time.

There is a popular walking path so we followed this around for the exercise and views and took a few side trips to look at crags and boulders that I’d like to try climbing on when my shoulder does heal …

So what did we do? Climbing Friday night. Market (very) early Saturday morning. Then I did some painting (sorry not finished yet so I can’t post it) and waited for our house guests, Mike and Audrey, to arrive from the Arapiles. We headed over to (my work friend) Noriko’s for a party (which turned out so well, there was good food, Japanese liquor and dancing :)

Sunday we all went down to the Portsea. Ross and I dived Portsea Hole. I experimented with taking wide angle shots, which I only usually do on shallow dive because visibility is often better, and when there is some kind of man-made structure. I think they turned out OK.

There were also walks on the beach, kangaroo, red wine, Trampoline, cookies & chatting. Hooray weekends. … of course now I am at work and Mike and Audrey are on their way to the Australian climbing festival.

1 Proximity to Squamish
2 Having an 8th floor apartment overlooking English Bay, which, for four nights a year, hosts the Vancouver Celebration of Light tri-nation firework competition
3 Cheap and excellent sushi.

The weekend has been relaxing so far…. Friday night barbecue on Nicole and Richard’s deck in North Van (to celebrate Richard’s 35th (!))… Matt brought a walking frame to the party and Jordan started to shake when it was pointed out that Rich is now closer to 40 than 30… It was SO good to see everyone , including Yoda Matt, “Fuck your shit up, I will”.

Saturday, after contemplating bouldering in Pemberton with Matt and Meghan and deciding we were making too late a start, Alex and I met up with Jeremy, Nikki and Patrick at the Edge and went climbing at the Sport Temple and Pleasure Dome areas north of Squamish where we met up with Terry McColl. Patrick made an epic ascent of ‘Just Glue It’ at the temple (video)before rushng ack to Vancouver to iron a shirt and go to a wedding and Nikki made her first 5.12 red-point in two years. Alex and I climbed  ‘Phantom Menace’ and Alex had an epic and tangled rappel from the top of the second pitch on Patrick’s 80m rope.

After climbing we whizzed back to the city in a hour (plus half an hour to park the cars in the hordes of firework traffic), picked up trays of great sushi from the Kishi Sky place on 1st and Nikki, Jeremy, Alex, Dryw, Marc and myself ate and watched the fireworks in my apartment. The performing nation was Sweden and we listened up the music via the simulcast on Classic Rock FM (8th floor in Kits is bit too far to hear it live from the barge). I didn’t see Canada’s performance on Wednesday, but heard they set their fireworks to jazz and it was excellent. Sweden chose to set theirs to what Marc and I decided must have been the soundtrack to an 80s movie, starring either Rob Lowe or Patrick Swayze (Pat just having the edge). Just when I was thinking it was way too Eurovision, they wove in some of Abba’s greatest hits…

-Wednesday at Cliffhanger with Rachel. So nice to see old friends again.
-Thursday at the Edge with Alex.
-Friday at the Senior Centre (a crag near Deep Cove) at the end of  private road that you have to dodge the residents to get along… Nice vertical climbing and you can see the water at Indian Arm from the road.
-Saturday was Nordic at Whistler with Nikki, Jeremy, Scott and Alex. On the way home we stopped at the Shady Tree in Squamish and, inevitably, bumped into familiar faces: Dale, who has been climbing in Squamish with a bunch of people and then, taking their table after they had left, Mike Doyle and  Audrey who had been hiking in Garabaldi provincial park.