A tale of friendship and climbing

The last trip I had before the regional boarders closed in Western Australia due to COVID was a big day mission, when I climbed with Rongy and Wiggins at Mount Frankland.  This was recounted in There and back again a climber’s tale.  It was an epic day with four seasons in one day, offering great atmospheric conditions both for climbing and videoing.  While Rongy and I climbed, Wiggins was ever present behind the lens capturing the moments.  That was just over three months ago, and today the latest Wiggins Video was released:

We thought it would be fitting to have the first showing at our place, after a boulder and social catch up.  The forecast for the weekend was lots of rain for all day on Saturday and Sunday.  So with the thought of an outdoor climb being off the table, this worked out quite well.  As I pottered about getting the place ready for guests, which really doesn’t take too much, the weather out west was getting dark and ominous as shown above.  Having people over is always a time of great excitement for our poodles, and it was good to see Nicka having a bit of a nana-nap before it all kicked off (do you reckon Lisa pampers her too much?):

Here in Western Australia we have just moved to Phase 4 of the COVID recovery plan, and that means a lot of the social distancing and group gathering rules have been relaxed.  Not really a great surprise to us seeing how isolated we are and also because there are very, very few cases left in the state.  The timing was however good for this little gathering, and the wall was soon open for business.  Alan sneaked in early so we got a bit of bouldering in ahead of the crowd.  Then as others arrived we started the usual follow-on game:

You might notice above and below that the forecast and early indications of rain were both grossly misleading.  We were instead bathed in glorious winter sun under a mostly clear blue sky.  As the climbers climbed and caught up, the kids played and the poodles waited intently around the food table hoping that someone would drop something for them to clean up.  The big people slowly wore themselves out on the wall, stripping skin of their fingers and eventually the climbing activity began to slow down:

It took a while before we moved indoors.  There was still plenty of food to munch and the sun simply made it too nice to move inside.  With the wall not in use so much, the kids started to have a bash themselves and both Katie and Ben showed their talents.  Ben even started to master the art of roof climbing.  He showed some real skills and I reckon he has been watching and learning from Rongy, making sure he kept his arms straight and keeping his feet up.  We did finally manage to head indoors for the main event:

Wiggins latest offering is his longest yet and so we made sure we were really settled and comfortable.  The poodles and kids got restless and came in and out, but the rest of us remained engrossed from start to finish.  The video while starting with that recent trip down south included many other snippets of Rongy and Wiggins’ climbing experiences.  It was everything we have come to expect from his productions and more being both professional and thoroughly entertaining.  Everyone loved it.  So if you are keen to see it head to my Wiggins’ videos post, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed: