With the warmer weather, supposedly, on its way and first light getting earlier and earlier Rongy, Howsie and I have decided to once again start up a weekday before works climb. I don’t intend to record every session, as it will get a bit repetitive, but this one is warranted it is the first. On the way up the scarp driving through state forest, as light was just creeping into the sky, I avoided a number of kangaroos. I also spotted an echidna crossing the road. While I have seen these guys up close and personal many times before, it was the first sighting in what I consider my own back yard. While I stopped to check it out, he was quick to scoot off the road and into the bush:
The above image was taken at ten past five… may the proceeding begin! Rongy was a little late arriving but still in time to join us for the first line. Being the first session we haven’t sorted travel arrangements and will endeavour to reduce our carbon emissions for future sessions, with at least two of us carpooling. The great thing about these early morning sessions is that we get hew place to ourselves. After the last few daytime trips here with families and tourists staring at, photographing and even videoing us it felt very nice indeed:
The only on watchers this morning were a bunch of kookaburras. After an hour or so they got bored, or realised that there would be no food scraps from us and moved on. Of course and as to be expected we heard the distant cawing of the red-tailed cockatoos, but there was no other sound to disturb our concentration. The intention of these sessions is more to get us climbing fit. Also for Rongy and Howsie it is also an easy way for them to squeeze a climb in during their changing lifestyles, with ever more demands on their time:
This being evident by how few weekends they have got out on rock. In fact they both found a number of the routes here unfamiliar, despite having both led them numerous times over the years. They were also lacing the usual climbing stamina they once had. At times I could tell they were starting to tire, question what to do and/or yoyo wasting precious strength. So on occasion I guided them as to where either a hand or foot hold was, and how to best use them. Almost to millimetre accuracy. It’s not something I would normally do. However for today, seeing they were getting back into it the beta was very well received:
You could at a stretch call these before work sessions training, not that I like to think of them as such. But we are very focused and organised to maximise the climbing time. If you check the second image you’ll see Howsie cleaning the line he finished, as Rongy starts up the next one. Two sets of draws and ropes and a well-planned attack keeps us moving, and there isn’t a lot of rest between climbs for anyone. Today we picked six lines that we were comfortable with meant we could smash out the quota in less than three hours:
For this first session only one person led each line, the other two seconded up with the rope above. As we continue these quick fire morning climbs this will change and we will pull the rope every time, but for today we were easing back into it. Hitting six lines in rapid succession on the steep technical walls of Welly Dam can be pretty intense, so I’ll have to be careful not to overdo it especially as we start to jump on the harder lines on offer. Even after finishing up there is no dilly-dallying, it is then time to drive back down the scarp to Bunbury, work and today rain:
Sandbagged 