Last Sunday with a clear blue sky and the mercury hitting the mid-twenty it felt like spring was in the air, so Steve and I headed up to Welly Dam to have a stretch. Why here, well Steve is lacking wheels (again) so it was in the right direction to avoid extra travel time for me but also because we love the place. With spring in the air the flowers are starting to blossom and the hay fever symptoms are creeping up, but not bad enough to hold me back just yet:
Steve is still getting ‘back into it’, and for those that remember his last trip out it ended with him chewing off a bit more than he should have. He was left dangling only to be lowered with his head hanging in shame, and gear that was welded into the rock. Now while Welly Dam is a pretty tough place to climb it is familiar, on bolts and escapable. So off he set all fired up and we started sensibly in This Murky Corner. Despite it having been a long while the muscle memory kicked in and he romped up. It was a good job he had no difficulties as to get the image angle and width I had to belay back a bit, and there is a significant weight difference between the two of us:
I followed up with my trusty weights vest having been dusted off and ready for use. I came up to Welly with Howsie on Friday and we spent three hours before work smashing out ten routes of which I wore The Vest on eight. Adding an extra nine kilograms it certainly makes the muscles work harder and also changes my centre of gravity (but still making me a light weight against Steve!). While I did get up the corner, I felt like every muscle, tendon and joint was fighting against me and several times my finger tips and toes slipped off their holds. Steve reckons that physiologically I would not have recovered from Fridays session so shouldn’t have been wearing The Vest again so soon. Needless to say I was more than happy to take this professional advice and The Vest went back to collecting dust:
So feeling light as a feather we plumped for BBQ, an oldie but goodie. I lapped it up taking a more direct line that would be first ascentist do, and enjoying a less wearisome feeling without the extra weight. As I came down Mario rocked up. It was a while back that I first met him at Welly Dam and it was when I was here with Steve that we had. Last time he was here with his better half but this time he came alone intending to top rope a few lines. Instead he joined us and I set him to task by belaying Steve, which took a while. Steve’s motivation, desire and will good not be denied but at the crux the body, energy and headspace went limp. Eventually and in a very tired state he got up before Mario jumped on to clean the route:
Mario then fancied Lord of the Flies and this really had Steve beat, the tell-tale signs of elbows protruding outwards and the body failing to hug the wall lead to a bit of flailing about on the steep crimpy crux sequence. The holds were simply way too small for today and he had to bail and recover. Despite this as I cleaned the route Steve was contemplating his next move. At the same time he got chatting to some tourists and he offered to show them the ropes, to which Jess (I think) with the red hat jumped at the chance. So we belayed Steve up The Crack and then left him with a top rope and the tourists:
As we heard Jess whoop and holler her way up the route in very good style Mario and I jumped on an extra couple of routes, bagging the very fine Rock Therapy and then Ear of Fear. Now one thing that I have not mentioned yet was the amount of time I had spent flicking messages to Lisa, Elseya and Howsie. There was good reason related to a particular animal care course, but of course like Pringles once you pop you can’t stop. Steve found this hilarious and while I may have been occasionally not focusing on the person whose life was in my hands… when the going got serious I was able to detach myself from the technology:
Steve came back into the fold beaming and energised, so we picked one last lead and it was one Mario had not tried yet. I led Savage Sausage Sniffer because it was my lead, but also the first bolt had them both whinging about how high it was. Steve stalled at where he then started to discuss the perfect placement for a new first bolt… yeah, yeah. We all managed to get up the sniffer and despite the sun still being out and the rock being in primo condition it was sadly time once again to say goodbye to the ole faithful Welly Dam, a place that I doubt we will ever get tired of:
For all yokels Mario will keep in touch and when he is back down this way will be very happy to meet up at Welly to have another play on this awesome rock wall.
Sandbagged 