Tag Archives: Rock Climbing

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first climb of the year

Something I’ve been planning to do for a while, especially considering the weather for most of the last two months has been more than adequate for scruffing around outside. It would have been sooner too, except for my idiocy trashing my knee doing yoga. It seems though if I exercise some restraint and care (harhar) it’s possible to do many of the things that I would normally do for pleasure (for values of pleasure involving some trauma).

I wandered around the corner and around two more to arrive at the path between an old people’s home and some kind of hospital-ish thing where my own personal almost 15 meter long by 6 meter high (I’m very inaccurate at measuring by eye) wall of rough ashlar sandstone. Much sun and occasional passersby wondering what I was doing.

The winter and frost has weakened some of the smaller edges, and being decided careful as well as weak in strength and skin thickness, I didn’t go past the half-way mark – where hard becomes very hard. Still, happy to be back doing this, and really wanting to make this year one where I find some long multi-pitches somewhere remote to wander up.

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Klettern Iranische Wand

I thought I’d written about this before, but … it seems not. Some time last year, or perhaps earlier this year, Dasniya and I went for a wander through Wedding. Up a street, along another, down a path, there to find on one side, the face of a building dressed in cleaved stone blocks, some 15 meters long and a bit over 5 high, vertical with each end a gentle overhang.

Just like my old favourite walls in Balaclava I’d spend the weekend on before retiring to The Wall to drink my one coffee for the week. I am drinking a coffee now, my second of the day. A celebration perhaps.

After discovering this wall, and having really not climbed at all in the last couple of years – though having refound my love of it last year – it took some months before first visiting. I expected it to be tough, and it was. I also expected torn fingers, blisters and the peculiar numbness that comes from grimacing on small edges, leaving each fingertip encased in a small callus.

It took some weeks, returning once or twice in each when I was in Berlin, before I could even do most of the moves and think about stringing them together. And once my fingers had been taught a lesson, it was time for my forearms to be traumatised. In the four and an half months since my first visit, I’ve been there perhaps fifteen times – less than I thought. Each time climbing a little more, longer.

It’s somewhat unpleasant an area. It could be pristine. Opposite is an old people’s home, the wall itself is beneath a large tree on a wide path. The people who walk it are locals who once in a while stop to watch or comment. If I said the corner end beneath the tree had the sweet smell of an alcoholic who’s pissed himself, it wouldn’t be a metaphor – the piss really is there, and once even, shit and toilet paper.

And the dogs not wanting to be left out line up on their leashes while their owners diligently add to the 35 tonnes of hundscheiße laid down across Berlin each day. When not raising a hind leg to spray.

I have small dreams of laying down my own concoction which would terrify the dogs into scampering home and crapping on their master’s bed. Or at least neither pissing nor shitting nearby. I did even do some weeding early in spring so the base of the wall could be found. It’s not so bad, really. Balaclava had the same problem, and I figure that regular use of my Iranische Wand will somehow discourage obnoxious bodily fluids.

Today though, I had a small celebration, finally climbing the full length left to right. I’m a long way from the level I was at where I used to do laps back and forth on the walls underneath the railway bridges, but it’s something of a return. It’s also in the style I like to climb: vertical, thin edges, balancey, and sustained. I’m not sure how hard it is, but in feeling it’s about the same as my former walls. I’ve started working on the reverse, right to left, so perhaps by the time it’s too cold to stick myself to the wall, I’ll be going in both directions. Maybe even photos next time.

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Surabaya, Indonesia Climbing Gym Job Opening

Those of you who have bothered to read supernaut for at least a few years (oh I have pity for you), will recall my several adventures to the north of Guangzhou at a place variously called Qingyuan (the name of the nearest big city), Jiulong (the Smith of Southern China), or if you came at it from the east, Yingde. There with Emmanuel, and several other drill-wielders from Hong Kong, we amused ourselves over humid weekends by climbing.

Eman left Guangzhou a couple of years ago for the equally humid and limestone-y (though politically less totalitarian) Indonesia, where the past while he has been planning something new:

Surabaya, Indonesia Climbing Gym Job Opening

Class 5 Recreational Climbing Center is looking for safety-conscious and fun climbers to join our team.

Class 5 Recreational Climbing Center is Indonesia’s first full service, indoor climbing facility. Our facility will offer 5000 squared meters of indoor climbing, a pro-shop that will stock a selection of climbing gear, and a a great environment to climb with friends and strangers alike.

I’ll be accepting resume or CV for both Part-Time or Full-time employment. If you’re a rock climber and you want to work in Indonesia’s first full service climbing gym let me know.

Job description:

1) Help to ensure the safety of all climbers; providing a fun and safe climbing environment is our first concern.

2) Teach new climbers the figure eight follow through, proper belaying technique, verbal commands (on belay, belay on, climbing, climb on)

3) Reception procedures with an emphasis on customer service.

4) Group and event responsibilities included

What we’re looking for:
Excellent people skills.
Some English useful
An interest in rock climbing
If interested or for more information, contact me: email hidden; JavaScript is required

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revalerstr 99

This week a haze has descended on me, it is easier to stay in bed safe in the folds of my duvet, light diffused by clouds and screens, maybe to… give in. I took this haze to Alexanderplatz and then on the S7 to Warschauerstr, punks with face piercings begging for change, always with a schön tag for any coins, politeness and a smile. Was I ever that?

I meant to visit Revalerstr for weeks, Der Kegel having the cheapest climbing and bouldering I’ve yet discovered, and knowing how much I shall suffer, still I miss that exhilaration. I wandered the street until it became grasslands, abandoned and fenced, then fenceless, almost like me, giving up, the road a suggestion of direction, though it couldn’t care less. Where had the city gone? Oh, what does it matter? Here you can collapse into the long, long grass and embraced, become a banquet. If I kept going, just past that slight curve which eats the edge of the road I shall be vanished. It is the end of the world somewhere near here.

So I turn. Always too shy to go a little further, where the openness closes down to one door, a single entrance, here I find my carelessness, my delicious need for losing myself is overtaken. And here is a whole part of Berlin yet unknown, RAW Tempel, and then I wonder of everything from here to Frankfurter Allee. Instead I take the U line across the bridge, suspended between windows and trees, coiling though where? I have no names, I remember an apartment stacked like an artist’s studio, I see someone through the glass, or imagine remembering I do. I keep going, I want this line to be endless. Near Orainenstr again I disembark, searching for bread, coffee, books, things, making tangible something I can’t describe. i have moments of such contentment, as if Berlin is cradling me.

warschauerstr, revalerstr warschauerstr, revalerstr

revalerstr - kill your gender revalerstr – kill your gender

revalerstr - cassiopeia revalerstr – cassiopeia

revalerstr - squ'art revalerstr – squ’art

something abandoned or waiting something abandoned or waiting

leading der kegel leading der kegel

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my baby is gone

Before I came to Adelaide, I dismantled my beautiful aluminium bicycle and along with half of my hiking gear, put it into hibernation. I never enjoy doing this, it feels slightly cruel, a temporary euthanasia, and this time I’d also stripped off some parts in anticipation of a long overdue rebuild, new bearings, cones, brakepads, cables, a complete dissembling to force myself to clean and scrub and polish and love my baby.

I’d just bought new tires, the slick, road-suctioning Specialized Fat Boys, that are the final mark in the transition of what was a downhill racing mountain bike into a fleet and gymnastic street bike. I’m going to reminisce on fourteen years of joy with what I in no small part seriously described as my longest relationship, a bike that were it alive would be the most sublime Arabian mare, who always slept in my room, and with whom I shared adventures and loss of skin.

People would say, oh I saw you on your bike, speeding like, wooosh … so fast, but it was always only half me, my bike could never go slow and I climb through the gears struggling to keep up, pushed from behind. So I’m giving this some anthropomorphic quality, like it was alive, and sometimes I thought she’d roll off on her own, so well-balanced and eager for movement.

I have this rough scar on my left hip, from where my front wheel was ensnared in a tram track on Swanston Street, hurling me in a vicious arc at the road, in a hail of arms and legs, bouncing and cartwheeling, I could hear people exclaiming with horror at the spectacle of my disaster. My bike was a little shaken, and needed a trip to my favourite bike shop for some tenderness. I was mostly bleeding with a hole torn in my hip to opalescent bone, dripping blood from a bouquet of elbows, knees, ribs and other sharp bits, and a concussion looking like I was an undead zombie. Lisa and Luke will remember me stumbling into rehearsal at Chunky Move like this.

Eighteen months later, my fear of trams tracks surmounted through a slick little hop of the front wheel, I laughed as I slid on other elbows, knees, thighs and bits as my back wheel greased out from under me on a glassy wet Brunswick Street track. More leaking of fluids.

I have a decoration of faint and raised dots down my right shin, where the front chain ring bit me, an emulsion of black chain grease, dirt and once more, me. This is love.

There is a hill in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, along High Street somewhere coming towards town that starts as a long straight downwards incline, cutting a set of red lights to get a terminal velocity and then banking right across two lanes speeding over 60, hanging far to the right and pushing the bike upright, the camber of the road sloping away under each tyre promising a fast messy slide into an abrupt curb, then having taken up both lanes cars even opening space, an even faster stretch down to a long left curve, this time the road’s inclination pushing me deeper into its surface. Speed. Faster than cars. Both terror and utter wild exhilaration.

I never felt tired on my bike.

Of course this story has a bad ending.

My beautiful bike, all dismantled and folded together, shrouded in old sheets and padded with hiking equipment, sealed under layers of tape in its box is gone. Stolen.

I went to move last night and where the box should have been was only emptiness.

I feel … today … hungover. Also utterly heartbroken. This bicycle, for certain causes I won’t write of is so much a part of me. It is as though my child has been kidnapped, abused, slain, and dumped in a lonely field. And with that, I feel it is my fault, I didn’t protect her. Fourteen years of lives together.

Nothing much more to say, except a dread feeling of impending doom, and the revulsion at the thought of these thieves touching my baby. I’ve been crying a lot and really want to drink until I pass out. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

So, being practical now.

My bike is very special. Unique. It is an early 90s Marin Rocky Ridge, a 15.5 inch polished aluminium frame with black forks, serial number ME2HA0233. It has ‘Marin’ in big black letters on the down tube. There were only a handful imported to New Zealand where I bought it, possibly none in Australia. I’ve never seen another.

Besides this rarity, it was heavily customised and unmistakable if you saw it. All the componentry was replaced with 2001 Shimano XT, and a 7-speed rear cassette and v-brakes. The handlebars are Specialized Tribars, curved like bull’s horns and wrapped in black cork tape, plus bits of gaffer on the left side. The seat post is Ritchie, and is raised to its limit, making almost as long as the seat tube. The seat is WTB with red kevlar patches on both sides, torn on the left. The rims are Mavic, the rear newer and deeper than the front. The chain stay has a blue velcro chain-slap guard attached. The tires are treadless Specialized Fat Boys. The pedals are Shimano SPDs. There were no reflectors.

Also in the box was a Mountain Designs one-person tent in bright orange. A brand new Korean backpack, I don’t think this brand is imported here, but I can’t remember the name. An MSR stove and pots, I think Whisperlite or XGK, but both look a bit different from my one. A bunch of other cold and wet weather hiking gear I haven’t had time to itemise until I go through the box they didn’t touch.

Altogether this weighed around 40kg, not easy for someone to carry around on their own in a large and cumbersome box. And the value? My bike was around $2500 when I bought it and I spent around $1500 upgrading it. The hiking gear round $2000.

stolen: marin rocky ridge serial: ME2HA0233 stolen: marin rocky ridge serial: ME2HA0233

my bicycle outside the wall in the rain my bicycle outside the wall in the rain

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burnley bouldering overpass

A late-morning ballet class, a lot of cycling, and a mid-afternoon boulder down at Burnley. I was feeling like chocolate might need to come to the rescue, and instead opted for lying on the park bench between the bouldering walls, the basin of the Burnley docks behind and above my head, water and the Yarra all around, and I was looking straight up at the underside of the freeway that runs like an oily gash alongside. The weather was holding on before breaking, and like my recent airport apron photos, there was something hypnotising in the play of light and water and the organic crawling of residue marking the flow of water on the concrete blankness.

burnley bouldering underpass - 1 burnley bouldering underpass – 1

burnley bouldering underpass - 2 burnley bouldering underpass – 2

burnley bouldering underpass - 3 burnley bouldering underpass – 3

burnley bouldering underpass - 4 burnley bouldering underpass – 4

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英西峰林走廊攀岩 rock climbing in qingyuan county

Under many different names but mostly known to us as Kowloon as in what Mongkok is a part of in Hong Kong, the Kowloon here is some two hours north of Guangzhou up the 107 highway, a word I use with most fleeting of accuracy, unless a representation of an elevated highway in mortal collapse is called to mind, although if you happen to take the wrong turn at Qingyaun and find yourself breathless in the quite spectacular Feilaixia Gorge before pulling into Yingde, a highway in this case would be best represented by a quagmire or river bed in spate.

Kowloon is a decidedly non-tourist village with a special hairdresser abutting the preferred lodging of climbers, for besides the infrequent on-the-bus-sleep-off-the-bus-photograph-temples tour group cavalcade passing through en route to the nearby hot springs, this is not a town on any manner of tourist trail. But for imbeciles whose idea of a good time is dropping fridge-sized blocks of limestone into cowering bamboo groves, and who don’t want to go to Yangshou to do it, Kowloon is a rock climbers’ undeveloped paradise.

Highlights of my first trip (via the Yingde river bed) early last year include drenching a family on a motorbike in thick slurry when overtaking too fast then our driver stopping to ask for directions, a reminiscence that will bring a smile to those of us in the car that day. Shortly after. we bottomed out in a pothole, losing the rear bumper, a trifle A Biao solved with a couple of swift kicks. Surprisingly enough, we actually fitted in some climbing.

Paul Collis, who put together the Yangshou guide book has done the same for Kowloon, almost fifty routes trad and sport, single and multi-pitch from 5.7 to 5.13 on limestone. This is still a quite undeveloped place, and many of the routes have had few ascents so are still settling down. The potential is vast, with hundreds of routes yet to be climbed. If your idea of a good climbing trip is going somewhere new and finding your own routes, Kowloon is certainly worth a visit on the China/South-East Asia circuit. Download the guide in pdf here.

The following notes, maps and topos form a rough guide to most of the established climbing in the Kowloon (Nine Dragons) area of Qing Yuan County, Guangdong. This guide was updated in June 2006. The climbing was mostly developed from 2005 to 2006 so grades given may not be accurate and there is still some loose rock around. The rock is typical tropical limestone – dark and quite sharp where exposed to rainfall, lighter, smoother and providing great climbing where sheltered from the elements. The area has beautiful countryside giving a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere for climbing.

See attached maps for how to get to Kowloon and the locations of the cliffs with climbing established on them. It is possible to get to the area using public transport. However this is not recommended as it is infrequent and very time consuming. Without private transport it is also difficult to get to the climbing sites.

Most climbers stay in the town of Kowloon. There are two or three small hotels, some restaurants, a supermarket, a wet market and small shops in Kowloon. It is a basic rural town with little tourism infrastructure. However, some mainland group tours come to the area to visit hot springs and take in the scenery. Take care not to confuse Kowloon in Qing Yuan county with Kowloon in Hong Kong. Although they have the same name, they are vastly different places.

Warning! If you are not a competent climber experienced in pioneering and new routing don’t use this guide to go climbing.

— Rock Climbing in Kowloon, Qing Yuan County, Guangdong, PRC

kowloon peak topo kowloon peak topo

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burnley bouldering

For a long time, my favourite place to train was the East St Kilda railway bridges, four walls of crimpy bluestone that would mangle fingertips after a few traverses, near the best café in Melbourne and sleepy enough that noone really cared about a lunatic doing laps. When I returned in December last year, I split my time between the bridge and newly-opened Lactic Factory.

This time back though a new place has grown out of the ashes of the way before my time Burnley underpass, an amazing project headed by Jacqui Middleton and the Victorian Climbing Club and a huge number of volunteers. I’ve been going there a few days a week for the last month and there’s always at least a couple of other climbers there, even on weekday mornings (yes, I have no employable attributes). I could easily spend entire days just hanging out there. Most importantly though, I’ve begun my long-dreamed of indoctrination of dancers into the cult of climbing.

In 1993, Chris Shepherd conceived the idea of having a long traverse wall near the CBD. The wall became very famous for its pumpy line. In 2003, risk management concerns highlighted the need for the route to be removed. Transurban offered to sponsor the construction of a new facility, and Parks Victoria offered the location; inside McConchie Reserve in Burnley. A Burnley Project Manager position on the VCC (Victorian Climbing Club) committee was created to oversee the project, and a project team was assembled to commence the planning process.

The VCC Burnley Project Manager rallied the climbing community to create a series of construction teams, leveraging skills climbers had developed in their day jobs. Construction began on January 31st, 2006, and the first routes appeared on April 29th, 2006. Regular internet posts on progress were viewed by other organisations, who came forward and offered their support. Four months and more than 130 volunteers later, the three walls were opened to the public.

Burnley Bouldering Walls

burnley bouldering burnley bouldering

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a pothole in jiulong

So I came back early. It was getting wet, which was slightly funny considering it hadn’t really dried, and trying to hang on in a slopey pocket filled with mud on greasy limestone was mostly an exersise in derangement. And coming back early was better than not coming back at all when I decided to side-pull off a tasty super-finger-loving flake that then – like the asteroid dwelling gargantuan moray eel in Empire Strikes Back turned out to be attached to a block half the size of a bar fridge which jumped at my leg before gently floating down to bash a crater in the rice paddies below. Lucky my leg was under something of an overhang so it just brushed past instead of trying to sit on it like a fat belligerent vampire baby. Yes, I screamed. I went, “eeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!”.

Climbing. Yeah. … I love Jiulong for climbing, but it really needs to be pummeled with a) a high-pressure hose to spray the mud where it belongs – in the fields, and b) always be approached with a hairdryer or a portable jet engine to dry out the slimy mud pockets that always lurk at the hardest moves ready to mug you like a sap who takes a shortcut down an ill-lit alley.

Besides the one climb of the day, we did a small amount of walking, the highlight being through the heart of one of the limestone spires, gutted by a stream and opening out inside into a vast black atrium. The good thing about caving is it’s always wet, so there’s no surprises when you stick your hand into something to hold onto … and it’s wet.

All this followed by a brisk return car ride through Qingyuan, which I think has taken the mantle from Dongguan of “shithole of the world”. I know it was pretty steamy and saturated with that South-East Asia fog/mist/hazy warm water mix that makes everything kinda poorly conceived and impenetrable, but that haze doesn’t normally stink of unique and different toxic miasmas every hundred meters. Nor is it usually yellow, grey, or corrosive. Qingyuan after all, was the city everyone was panicked for after the chemical plant upstream in Shaoguan dumped a load of poisonous sludge into the Bei Jiang a couple of months ago. I don’t know how pollution would be quantified in a place like this. Even our driver called it a shithole.

cave entrance with guest and ktv house cave entrance with guest and ktv house

the water buffalos' drug stash the water buffalos’ drug stash

inside the cave atrium inside the cave atrium

cave entrance into bamboo forest cave entrance into bamboo forest

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eeeeeee!!! blog!!!!

I was going to write a whole bunch of stuff about a whole pile of stuff, lots of exciting Guangzhou things going on, including my new mobile phone number which ends with 666 … 魔鬼手机, but got distracted by a block of chocolate… Now I have to get up at 6am to go to north Guangdong Province for the weekend and climb some new routes that have been drilled into the countryside in my absence. Hopefully I’ll return Sunday.