Week Two in the Grampians

Just a quick post from Horsham Public Library where the lady at the desk was kind enough to not charge me for internet!

Climbed in a bunch of different areas and on loads of different routes already.  The rock is an awesome really unique type of sandstone.  The closest thing I can compare it to is Hueco Tanks in West Texas, (at least the parts of Hueco with dishes and open hand holds, it's not nearly as crimpy).  I've climbed nothing harder than V7 (higher numbers mean harder boulder problems, or climbs) so far, but one of those was a flash (I climbed it first try), and I've almost got two V8s and a V9.  There's a V11 I want to project (spend lots of time perfecting the moves so you can climb the whole route from start to finish without falling) that I did all the moves on but the crux (hardest) one.  Here is a video of someone climbing the V11, it's called Forced Entry because there's a mono (a pocket you can only fit one finger in) on the route that is really hard to use well becaue it's so small.  I also climbed this really fun highball V4 (highballs are boulder problems that are high enough that there is potential for injury, but V4 is a lower difficulty than I warm up on, and I had lots of spotters below me) called Volume 1000, next time I have interent I'll bring my camera and upload the pictures I got of me on it.

I did my best to translate the climbing jargon into english in the italics, so I hope the paragraph above is readable by everyone.

So an awesome ten days and that's just the climbing.  The climbers I've met so far have all been really cool interesting people.  I started the week climbing with a couple from Sydney who showed me around, then a group from Melbourne, and now another guy from Sydney.

I'm looking forward to climbing some harder stuff this next week, now that I'm used to the rock and have worked out what I want to project.

Grampians Tomorrow

Just cooked myself some dinner in the hostel in Melbourne, pasta and tomato sauce :). Just about the only thing I can cook. And by tomato sauce I mean ketchup.

I went to two different rock gyms today and yesterday looking for climbers going to the Grampians this weekend, unfortunately the forecast isn't great so not many people are going up and I couldn't find a ride. But I'm going to take the train up tomorrow anyway. Some of the climbing is so close to horizontal that it stays dry even in storms. On a positive note I onsighted (climbed first try without falling) the hardest route in the first gym I went too; impressed the guy I was climbing with haha. For any climbers reading it was a 28, or 5.12d in american climbing grades. And the second gym I went to a really good bouldering gym, and packed with serious climbers so that was fun. 

The weather in Melbourne hasn't been great. It was nice the day I arrived, cool but not cold. Today however it rained all day, and I got drenched in the early afternoon because I walked really far away from the hostel as it was sprinkling, then by the time it truly started raining I was about almost an hour away....

So I won't have Internet when I'm camping, but when I do I'm sure I'll have a load of climbing photos to upload. There's a McDonald's in the town nearest the campsite, so if I can get there I'll use the their wifi.

Thanks for reading!

Montville

The top left picture is from an overlook by Montville, a town in the hills further inland from the Sunshine Coast.  The other two are from a lake near Gwyn's house where on his birthday (today), we took out his two radio controlled sailboats.  Gwyn has a group he takes out the boats with regularly.

The boats are actually really hard to sail, especially since from the shore it's hard to tell exactly what the wind is doing to the sails.  Not to mention the fact the last time I sailed anything was at least 3 years ago, if not more.  My boat spent quite a bit of time zigzagging or sitting still haha.

Tomorrow early start to fly to Melbourne, then a couple of days enjoying the city and getting last minute things together for my trip into the mountains.  Probably won't be uploading photos for a while since any blogging I'll be doing will be from my iPhone.

Lunch by the Beach

Here's a photo of me from yesterday, when Gwyn and I enjoyed lunch in Caloundra.

I've been talking about making the most of my jetlag and getting up early to photograph the sunrise from the beach (I've been waking up around 5), but then I think about getting out of bed and decide to go back to sleep haha.  When I eventually made my way to the beach at about 9 this morning I brought my book, and after reading for an hour or so walked down the beach to Cartwright Point.  I kayaked in the afternoon to the nearest mariner, unsurprisingly managing to get myself a little sunburned.

It's lovely here but after looking through my climbing guidebook for the Grampians (which I ordered to here so have only had this week) I'm psyched to climb there.  Monday to Melbourne, then Thursday to the mountains :).