Table of contents for December 2019 - February 2020 in Vertical Life

The Victorian Climbing Discussion Forum – the main hub of online discussion of Grampians/Gariwerd access – has been subject to hijacking. There has been a lot of heat on the forum recently, not only due to the playing out of internal ructions in the newly-formed Australian Climbing Association Victoria (ACAV), with the committee attempting to remove the president in a move that is, depending on your perspective, either totally justified or totally unjustified. The Victorian Climbing Discussion Forum, formerly the ‘ACAV Discussion Forum’ (its name was changed as some within the ACAV thought the conversation there might reflect badly on the ACAV), has at times seemed to have been manipulated by those more interested in waging culture wars than speaking about climbing access. Amongst the worst posts was one about…

Tell us a little about yourself I’m 34, live in Newcastle, NSW, and I’m the Manager/Head Route-setter of Pulse Climbing Warners Bay. I grew up in the foothills of the Blue Mountains and apart from some sketchy scrambling while camping I never climbed, mainly because I was pretty unco and super timid as a kid. My family moved up to Newcastle when I was 15, and after finishing school I worked in kitchens, starting off as a dish-pig and working up to cooking. Around this time, a friend convinced me to give climbing a go at Pulse – and I fell in love. I’m a climbing omnivore; sport, bouldering, trad, indoor or outdoor, I don’t care, as long as I’m getting chalky digits and hanging out with mates I’m happy.…

The North Face Futurelight Summit L5 LT RRP $650 Pros: Super breathable, light and comfortable for all-day wear. Cons: Sightly wind permeable. Back when I was an impoverished uni student I somehow got onto the mountaineering club’s planned Himalaya expedition. Rick White and his fledgling company, Mountain Designs, gave us a killer deal on sleeping bags, down jackets and outerwear. Rick had just imported a new fabric called GoreTex that reputedly mimicked breathable and waterproof biological membranes. Armed with outerwear Rick had sewn from this fabric, Lincoln Hall and I went off to the Land of Tortured Vowels (NZ) to test it and ourselves in preparation for our upcoming high adventure. Part-way through our multiday traverse of Nazomi and Aoraki a wet nor-wester struck so we dug a snow cave.…

When I first met John in 1958 his dad worked for GMH and helped design the original Holden. Cecil died from a heart attack when John was 14. We were playing cricket when his mum came out with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate to give him the news. We went to Oak Park High School, which in 1960 was a division of the Hunger Games. John was my Jennifer Lawrence. At lunch time 200 boys faced off, kick-to-kick over a single football. More often than not, you could watch John climb the backs, shoulders and heads of the big kids in the pack to take a spectacular mark. He was fearless. In cricket season 50 runs was a bad day for John. He represented the school and the state…

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‘Could you try to hang on one arm for me, please?’ I jumped on the bar, let go with my left arm and my body started to uncontrollably rotate. ‘This is fucked.’ I thought ‘Not bad,’ Lee said, ‘we just need to make the shoulder stronger and you will be alright.’ In between exercises to rehab my injured shoulder at his clinic in the Blue Mountains, Lee mentioned that Angie ‘The Future’ Scarth-Johnson and he had bolted a few routes on the Newnes Plateau and that it would be rad to get some photos of them. There was immediately enough psych for the job, which would be much more fun than rehab. Though, as always, the crux would be finding a time that worked for all three of us. Almost…

Making headlines a couple of months ago, Uber introduced an option for passengers in the US to pay a levy to put their driver on mute. Really, is this where we are now? We are so disdainful of our fellow humans that we’d fit them with a volume knob to save ourselves from the great inconvenience of small talk? I didn’t realise Uberese was so offensive. It wasn’t that long ago that the passengers of the world were collectively delighting in the humanity and personality of ‘ride sharing’, and dissing the bad old days and dour silence of the taxi. While I was in the middle of pondering the intolerance of the Age of the Individual, my climbing gym installed an auto-belay. One became two, and then three. The solo…

When looking to improve well may you ask, do I need to get stronger or do I need to get better? Id wager that your answer will be stronger, because training strength is familiar and quantifiable, we know what getting stronger 'feels like', but having all the strength in the world is no good if you can’t use it – afterall a gun that doesn’t fire is just a club. Think about the old crag local wh,o despite being unable to hold the edge on your warm up hangboard, can still warm up on your project. Are they stronger than you or more skilled? The opposite is also true, if you have no strength then you are unable to bring all your skill to bear. Picture the same wiley crag…

Climbing Blue Mountains–style in the 1960s: the Psyn Cave, Narrowneck and a weekend of climbing with the Sydney Rockies, planned at the Tuesday evening meeting at The Railway Institute Sydney, later, The Hero of Waterloo pub at The Rocks. John Worrall, he was young and gruff, kind and decent, remembers Judy Law, ‘Whenever I climbed with him I felt safe in his strength of character and body.’ He was a good climber, almost larger than life, bridging from motor mechanic to the bush and climbing. And climb he did. The two Johns, Worrall and Ewbank, were one of the great Australian climbing partnerships. They dominated the late 1960s scene in NSW with their relentless hard climbing and new routes in the Blue Mountains, Warrumbungles as well as Mt Buffalo in…

Danger Darren had bought another boat. His previous one sank off a lonely beach on the northern tip of Flinders Island. Danger, Dave Globull and Duncan Meerding had made a dash across the strait under a full moon that illuminated a chaotic sea. The three Ds made it through the night, but all the rattlesnake charm in the universe couldn’t save the boat. Battered and bruised it began taking on water just past Killiecrankie Bay. Fortunately for them, unlike Captain Hamilton and his crew of Bengali sailors who in the 18th century were shipwrecked nearby on Preservation Island, the three Ds did not have to row to the coast of Victoria and walk 800km to what would become Sydney in order to survive. In terms of Tassie’s pillars, climbers had…

I found myself lying alone in a hostel dorm in Tokyo, Japan, my bruised and swollen ankle elevated on a pile of pillows and blankets I had poached from the empty beds in my room. This wasn’t where I’d expected to find myself just days out from the final World Cup of the season. It was all happening at the wrong time. But I guess there never really is a good time to break your ankle. Five competitions over four weeks, in four different countries, across three continents. That’s what was in store for me when I set off for my third international trip of the year. The grind of training and climbing had become somewhat monotonous since I returned from my last event, the 2019 World Championships in Hachioji,…

Andy Pollitt grew up in a small town called Dyserth (UK) and was very lucky to have a climbing wall at his school. This determined his future. His extrovert, addictive personality (he came from a family of stage and TV actors) would find a home in the ‘80s climbing scene, where he loved lycra, ladies and leaping on routes that filled others with fear. Amongst his shining early achievements, Andy made the first repeat of John Redhead's route, The Bells, The Bells! (E6 6b), at Gogarth North Stack, Wales, which other E7 leaders called 'death on a stick' and 'utterly ridiculous'. He made the first ascent of Knockin' on Heaven's Door (E9 6c), one of those 'Last Great Problems’ at Curbar Edge, Yorkshire. Andy found his way to Australia. Glenn…

Climbing guidebooks aren’t everyone’s thing. For some, they detract from the adventure of the unknown. But not for me. There’s nothing like the moment of anticipation as you flip through crisp pages for the first time. Dopamine floods. Fantasies activate. Tick lists begin to form. Tips get sweaty. But not all guidebooks are equal, and it’s my firm-yet-biased opinion that Australian guidebooks are the best. They have real personality. While my guidebook collection has grown over the years, my most treasured is still my first: Neil Monteith’s Grampians Climbing Sport Crags: 2013 Edition. About six months after I first crammed my feet into a pair of climbing shoes, I fractured my ankle at the local gym. For some this may have been a catalyst to jump ship for a less…