Gone Epic

Maddie misbehaves if she's on a lead, she's far better off it, but still won't return reliably, and has a fascination with cars that could far too easily be terminal. She also likes to chase runners and cyclists, so anywhere that there are other people is a problem at the moment. The hope is that after dark will be better due to the lack of people, especially in winter, but finding and keeping track of her is harder. I saw the nice <a href="http://www.squeakerdogs.com/collections/poochlight-illuminating-dog-collars"> Squeaker collars </a> and figured that they would be a great solution, as well as making her visible if she did end up on a road. Sadly between the AU dollar and the car work, I couldn't afford the $40 price tag, but I found something similar on ebay for $5. I don't expect it to last nearly as long, and it's not rechargable using CR123 batteries, but it will do the job for a few months while I decide whether it's worth th...

Canberra is home to an abundance of good climbing, mostly on granite, long multipitch slabs, and a lot of boulders. The main bouldering area for the last decade has been Black Range - an hour away, past Queanbeyan. Black range comprises numerous areas of great problems spread throughout the gums. Originally developed at a similar time was Pierces Creek, despite being much closer (~20 mins) it faded into obscurity due to the 2003 Canberra fires, which destroyed the pine forest, and damaged many of the problems. I had a look out there a few times, between '08 and '10, but found limited areas, with no traffic, a lot of cleaning required and a lot of chipped holds in some areas. Having not visited it prior to the fires I didn't realise the quality problems  I was missing. Over the last year or so it has seen a resurgence. The old maps were translated into google maps on theCrag, published in Duncan's guide, and a few areas were cleaned up and redeveloped for publishin...

The 20-ish peak challenge is a challange to climb all of the Australian peaks over 2000m. This is possible as they are all in the same area of New South Wales, spread over a span of ~60km.  The Plan This time we were starting high at Charlottes Pass, heading out to the Ramshead range via Mt Stillwell, before going up to Kosi and then finishing the Main Range track, before heading North to Jagungal and Gungarten, and then returning from Guthega through the Perisher mountains. The day before We drove up after work with the car packed, camping at Charlottes to get an early, but not so unreasonable start as the previous attempt. The day We started at 8am after a quick breakfast of gels and bars. We made good progress up through the Stillwells, and then dropped back down to the Kosciuszko Road. We headed up the road to Rawsons pass, turning off towards Thredbo and jogging out along the smooth, raised footpath. After a kilometer or so we veered off th...

The Plan Head North from Guthega power station up to Schlink pass on bikes, head up Gungarten and then return to the bikes for the next 20-30km north to walk into Jagungal 7/2/15 was the big day. The day We started early, 4:45 AM we started the watches -  and started the long haul up to the pass, the going was slow, but not unmanageable. Despite the cold at the start we were soon down to jerseys and shorts, leaving the warmer stuff for pickup on the return journey. The walk up to Gungarten was a pleasant reprieve, before the return to the saddle. The track continued to be good for a few kilometers, before the turn off to Valentines hut. From there the track got steeper and dropped in and out of valleys, and the track was overgrown with grass. The pace slowed to a crawl, even the descents were quite slow. Eventually we turned back about 10km short of Jagungal, as we were down to just a few energy gels each for the return journey. On the way back I broke a spoke, and popped...

Climbing.com publishes the Unbelayvable stories every week. Stories recounting dangerous practices observed by climbers all over the world. Generally the editor is pretty good with their analysis, but they always take the reporter at face value, and are often just trying to find issues.  Climbing's 5 bad belayers from 2014 1. A good climber, a long way off the deck, on an easy well climbed route. In that situation, I know few belayers that don't look down and relax their neck. The climber will know this and yell if they fall, which should be unlikely if it is a well climbed line well within their limits. The hand position is inexcusable, but the angle to the first bolt is certainly manageable. Basically depends on a number of other factors we weren't given, but I wouldn't rule out being belayed by this one. 2. Inexcusable, a hand belay for a lead fall... 3. again, no excuses... except maybe killing off gym bunnies wearing hats inside 4. When will people sto...

If you haven't seen the Dumb Anchors blog, it's well worth a look, just to see some of the stupidity on display. That said there are several posts on there that pose no real danger, and demonstrate the prejudice of the author more than anything. A few of the common things that they pick up, and that while I might not create it, I'd have no problems using the setup: They seem to hate slinging trees at all, even at ground level.  Seem to have never heard of or used a triple wrap anchor, and regularly complain that they are a tensionless anchor, the fact is that the friction alone is enough. the knot at the end should never see a load, and any such slip will be negligable.  They hate additional slings, citing additional points of failure. I for one am happy to sling a tree then use a 'biner and tie the rope to it, I don't need to pass 10m of rope around the tree and then tie it off. If the anchor is CERN then there is very low risk of the sling or 'biner bre...

The wayback machine is a collection of stories that took place years ago, but demonstrate elements of, or turned into full blown epics.  So I went for a roadbike ride with the dog, at midnight or so... it was a lovely ride, a little cold, but not too bad, but at the end of the ride when I got towards Yack I realised that Binnie had slowed down a lot. At that point she used to devour 30km mountain bike rides, so it wasn't an endurance issue, we'd only done 20 k's. I stopped in the war memorial at Yack and checked her paws, she was close to running the pads off them... she was ok now, just sore, but she wouldn't make the return trip. Unfortunately my options were limited at 3am. I had a phone in the early days of mobile, but the place my parents and I were looking after was a mobile black spot, and I hadn't saved the number of the landline. I had no lead, so I couldn't tie the dog up, ride home and come pick her up. In the end I waited in the rapidly cooling...