Despite how I ended my post yesterday, Howsie and I kept messaging each other with ideas of how we may be able to retrieve our gear. Unfortunately, we didn’t know anyone close enough to ask them to pop out. There were however two other possibilities. Howsie said he may head down with the family on Sunday. While I was waiting to hear whether Sam would be keen to get out. That would be Sam from work, as opposed to Sam who has headed to the east coast. He decided on a surf instead of a climb, leaving my Saturday morning a bit in limbo:
Lisa is up and out early with the Peppy Plungers on Saturdays. The routine normal results in her not being free to do anything else until nine or a bit later. This afforded me a window of opportunity, and to make it worthwhile I planned to throw in a walk to The Playground for a boulder. I left early, when there were hardly any other cars on the road. There was however plenty of life. Keeping a careful eye out I managed not to hit any of the mobs of kangaroos, unidentified rodent that scampered across the road, bunch of rabbits, or two foxes I saw:
I also avoided the second owl I spotted, as it floated just above the roof of the car. Sadly however I was not so lucky with the first. That one flew up from the road side as I rounded a corner, clipping the top of the windscreen. While it is a strong word, I really do hate it when I hit animals. I went back to check on the road and verges, but didn’t find a body nor any feathers. Continuing my journey, all I could do was hope it had survived. On arrival I walked to the top of the cliff in darkness, where I found our gear still where we had left it:
Packing the gear I headed to The Playground, and would normally head along the coast. But still being sensible, even if it doesn’t sound like it, I followed the Cape to Cape track. A more even and well-trodden path that traversed relatively high on the ridgeline, and offered less obstacles on which to ‘come a cropper’. I had to rely on torchlight for the mile long hike, so it felt like a good move. First light still hadn’t appeared when I got to the crag, only starting to creep in as I started scaling lines. Keeping myself in check and avoiding the harder problems:
This was because I was not keen take a fall. The small buttress has a soft, sandy landing making it perfect for pushing yourself in a relatively safe environment. But today was not the day for that. Plus it offers plenty of fun lines to play on that I was confident of not taking a tumble. Added to that there is a great and reasonably long, low level traverse. The wall is undercut and this results in the traverse really working your arms. With your feet never being more than a foot above the ground, for the entire line:
I surprised myself a bit with how much I managed to do. All good things must however come to an end. After close to an hour and a half of bouldering it was time to leave. The return trip was along coast, heading south towards the mighty Northern Blocks. Maybe next time Howsie and I get out, he’ll be more psyched for a few tougher climbs there. For now I was content to just look at the cliffs being light up by the early morning sun, as were the stairs at the left hand end that I had descended in darkness just a few hours back. With the mornings fun stuff over, on the drive home it was time to go shopping:
Sandbagged 