Spreadin' sin

Uncle John scratched the earth deeply with a long rusty nail. "He knowed about sin. I ast him about sin, an' he tol' me; but i don't know if he's right. He says a fella's sinned if he thinks he's sinned." Uncle John's eyes were tired and sad. "I been secret all my days," he said. "I done things i never tol' about."
Ma turned from the fire. "Don' go tellin', John," she said. "Tell 'em to God. Don' go burdenin' other people with your sins. That ain't decent."
"They're a-eatin' on me," said John.
"Well, don' tell 'em. Go down the river an' stick your head under an' whisper 'em in the stream."
Pa nodded his head slowly at Ma's words."She's right," he said. "It gives a fella relief to tell, but it jus' spreads out his sin."
Uncle John looked up to the sun-gold mountains, and the mountains were reflected in his eyes. "I wisht I could run it down," he said. "But I can't. She's a-bitin' in my guts."

Overall I didn't mind the book, however the dialogue style/spelling really gave me the shits. And the third person, situational chapters of scenes that would have taken place during the great depression, mostly painting an anti-capitalist picture also gave me the shits (again, more the style, rather than the content). Otherwise he's a brilliant writer.

October LWE in Kosciuszko

The snow season started a little late this year, but got into full swing around the third weekend when a 5 day storm starting on a Wednesday brought over a metre of snow to the resorts and more to the main range. I happened to be down that weekend, the Saturday was very windy with low visibility but fairly good snow. Little skiing was achieved. The Sunday was substantially worse - it was so windy and the snow so thick I retreated to Sydney when a guy in a Land Cruiser told me he was struggling in the conditions as he drove out.
I went down the following two weekends to some of the best conditions I'd ever experienced. I skied across the snowy river instead of needing to use the bridge. We skied some amazing virgin powder, amazingly dry, soft and fluffy. We went further out than I'd ever been. I managed to tele-turn. So it was a bit of a let down as the season continued and the conditions deteriorated quite quickly as a result of little follow up snow, seemingly resulting in a short season - most NSW resorts down to half their runs with more than a fortnight before the official end to the season.
So it was with great delight that with a week until the official end I spied a forecast containing claims of between 10-20cm for a few days in a row - coinciding with the long weekend. The closer the weekend drew the more promising the forecast looked, so with no dry bushwalks to be had anywhere in the state I managed to convince Ans that if we were going to be precipitated on anywhere, we might as well do it where we could use it to our advantage - Kosciuszko!
The only way it would happen is if we had a leisurely drive down on the Saturday and spent the night in Jindy. It was done, and great pizza was had at a local establishment. Sunday came and with ominous clouds still lingering we headed off up the mountains and out to Guthega. We could barely see the peaks for the snow and cloud, leaving me a bit uncomfortable at the thought of staying in the backcountry that night. As a result we kitted up for a daytrip and left Guthega for the main range. There was enough snow to ski (and skin) all the way to the snowy river, but the short season also made short work of the previous snowbridge across it. It was back to using the swing bridge.
As we skinned up Twynam Creek, snow falling lightly on us and the winds nowhere near as bad as the 30-45km/h that had been predicted, I felt even worse about my decision to not stay in the backcountry that night - at least 8 tents were set up in various points on either side of the creek. Still, we made the best of a bad situation and continued up the hills towards Twynam. The higher we got the stronger the winds got, and with more than a kilometre to go we could see no more than 100m at a time. We bailed on the idea of making it up to Sirensong catchment and peering over the western end and decided to go down. We skied down and skinned back up several times. Each time we came down we had fresh snow to ski on - snow was light, fluffy and continually falling. After a bite to eat and more snow eating we did one final run - from the very top of Twynam creek all the way to the swing bridge back across the snowy. We skinned the final section as our muscles fatigued and made it out before the sun dipped.
We spent an uneventful night in the van and woke early to a bright, cloud free and freezing sky - so cold that the van had frozen locks, windows and all but one door. I eventually boiled enough water to unstick all these before we headed up the ridge across the dam from Guthega. I was only in a t-shirt and waterproof pants for most of the way up. The sun was bright and hot, hot, hot. We made it to the top of the ridge by around 10am where I had a (bad) attempt at some tele turns. After returning from a short run Ans and I both headed down - a sensationally fun 1km run back to the dam. She lay and sunned herself while I had "one more run". By the time I stopped to again run down it was just after 11am, hotter again in the sun. As I skied down, more than once I almost ground to a halt, the snow now wet and very slow. Well before I reached Ans I had to use my stocks to push me down the hill. Now the day, and the season, was truly ending. We skinned back to the van and were out of the national park before midday. Regardless, the weekend had been fun and relaxed with mostly excellent conditions.
I am already looking forward to the 2012 season when Sirensong, Little Austria and various other beauties will be skied by me.
I put some photos up on g+

Pantoney's Crown

We bailed from Sydney on Friday night around the 7pm mark, heading straight out past Wallerawang power station and on towards "long swamp track". Using the (now very out of date) topo maps I started worrying about how long the track seemed to be. The only information I had about the walk and this track was from other people's trip reports, and they weren't explicit enough for me. The only TR I found this road mentioned in referred to them having to rescue the car from a frigid puddle in the dark using a jack and a lot of pushing for an hour.
Luckily, no such trouble befell us and we managed to get to the end of the road with only one bottom-out and a few slow sections over "big speed humps" (of sorts). We came to a fork in the road with a little fireplace. To be sure we were in the right place, I attempted driving further down the road another 20m, but found only darkness, and the tree canopy suddenly at our eye level. "You'll know you've reached the end of the road when it looks like you're about to drive off a cliff!" Andrew said, referring to the sudden need for a heavy-duty 4WD. With such a drop it could only be the place, and we were soon sleeping at midnight.
I awoke to my alarm in the darkness at 5:15am. We had planned to head down the other branch of the fork to attempt to get a view of Pantoney's Crown in the rising sunlight. With no food and only my camera and a map we headed down the road. After 15 minutes we peeled off the road and into the bush, the sky quite bright by now, sunrise was getting close. I figured that we'd be somewhat close, so a typical, gardens-of-stone national park rock-pagoda was climbed. Upon reaching the top we could see nothing that resembled Pantoney's crown, nor anything on the map around it, for that matter. With only the map of the 10km around the crown we had no idea what area we were looking at. The sunbeams reached us while we were trying to make heads or tails of the map, so with no hope of any sunrise photos, after posing for a quick photo (or 10) we headed back to the van to start the walk to the real deal, so much for it being easy to find...
We ate and were on our way at 7:40am, down the "cliff-line" of sorts. It certainly was 4WD-only territory, with massive ruts and channels, metre-high rock ridges and a loose sandy surface. The packs weren't too heavy, with only 5.5 litres of water (that point comes back to haunt me) and minimal other gear, including a tripod for the camera. We didn't go the usual way via Baal Bone Gap and the pressure reducing station. As mentioned, I'd only read about this walk on trip reports so I picked what I thought would be the best way based on the maps. We headed along Moffit's Trail before turning north and making our way to the cliff-line. By doing this we inadvertently missed "the big boot" rock formation, and ended up doing a bit too much bush-bashing for our liking. Next time it will be via the Gap. Regardless, almost two hours out from the car we burst out of the bush and onto the cliff-line, with near panoramic views to the crown, back to BB Gap, Pt Cameron and far into the distant Capertee Valley. We took the happy snaps we needed and walked on, following the cliff-line towards Baal Bone Point (which was incorrectly marked on the ... 70s topo map).
The ridge edge is not as straight as imagined and we often had to head directly west to get away from the cliff edge and onto decent walking pads, but the closer we got to Baal Bone Point, the closer we ended up to the cliff edge regardless. The track comes within 2m of a 50m (or more) drop, more than once, in the final 1-2km before the point. Some chossy cliffs above us had disintegrated, leaving a fine dusty chalk of various colours at various points. Perfect for aboriginals to create art with, it seems. We continued along the track and ended up arriving at Baal Bone Point before midday. It was getting quite hot by this point and we were drinking a fair bit of water, something the meaning of didn't really hit us yet, so we sat in the shade and had lunch, gazing out towards the Crown and back along the  cliff where we had come from, taking happy snaps all around.
After Ans had a short 15 minute snooze we clambered out along the final ridge before doing a 180deg turn at Anvil rock and down a steep chute and off the ridge proper. The track that took us away from Anvil rock and towards the crown was obvious enough, but very steep and loose! When we neared the bottom of the saddle between the two rock features it became apparent exactly how hard this walk was going to be. Pantoney's Crown seemed miles away, and what was worse, seemed miles higher than where we were. We plodded on regardless, losing and regaining what track(s) was around to get us to the base of the crown. We merely headed for the most southerly point of the crown and when we finally hit the cliffline we found the ascent gully right in front of us. It looked quite exposed, towering some 50m above us.
After a short break we climbed up. Sure enough the exposure was amazing, but luckily the higher we got the larger the ledges below us were, to stop a fall right to the bottom. We got up to the top with some chimneying skills and pounding hearts, spending the next 15-20 minutes drinking, taking in the views and committing them to digital format. It really was spectacular.
It was barely past 3pm at this stage so we wandered around the top checking out the views while keeping an eye out for a campsite, which was to be found directly east of the summit cairn, a flat rock that we were going to lie on with the stars as our roof. Faffing, reading and writing in the logbook, more photo taking and checking out map features rounded out the daylight, and we cooked some food before heading for the flat spot at 7:30pm. It was dark, there was just the two of us and we really were quite tired - very little reason existed to stay up late into the night.
As we were lying there, quite tired and hot, since the expected drop in temperature never occurred with the setting of the sun, I realised the problem we now faced with water. We were still really parched yet not even two litres existed between the two of us - and there were no puddles in ironstone bands like in all the other photos I'd seen. I tried drinking as little as possible, but at the end of the hot and bothersome night I now had just one litre while Ans had little more than half a litre. Not good. We sparingly used some water for porridge and set off for the northern descent of the crown around 6:20am.
Again, the only information I had (from Andrew again) was "You have to find the hole first". The hole? What hole?? Having gone as far north as possible and not finding any decent descents, we started backtracking. Eventually on the northern end of a shallow gully (that spewed off the east face down 150m+ cliffs) I discovered an 8m chimney. We de-packed and I dropped the 12m rope I had down for Ans to descend in (relative) safety. She hadn't looked around when sitting down preparing to head down as I had suggested, so when it came time for me to nervously attempt the descent I happily noticed the hole Andrew had been talking about to my right, with the start some 2m behind me. I quickly stood up and took the hole option. Ans was a bit miffed she missed it so clambered back up through it and down again. We continued on fairly decent terrain and wide ledges until several steep scrambles landed us at the base of the northern point of Pantoney's crown. Terra-firma! I was quite relieved as I hadn't wanted to have to reverse the Southern end ascent and the northern descent wasn't anywhere near as exposed, but still enough to worry about.
We headed pretty much north down faint tracks that disappeared and reappeared until we ended up at a fairly open camping area with a fire-pit and a couple of big rocks for seats. We were quite far north by now and were it not for a wide, pleasant track heading further north, I really would have started on the south-east bearing we needed to take. Instead I made the dumb decision to follow the track. After a fair amount of walking the folly of my lack of trust in my own judgement dawned on me. It was now around 11am, we were clearly a ridge away from where we were supposed to be, 3km from the road and a further 6km of road away from a supply of water. To make things worse, Ans and I finished all but 100ml of water that we had left. We struggled down into the creek line and back up the other side. The ridge was wide and long enough to prove that this was indeed the correct one, so Ans' mistrust was lost and the world was a better place. Almost. 
At midday we landed on the trail where we rested. We ate lunch and prepared ourselves for the long trudge ahead. We set off at a fair pace, but not even 1km along I realised we were going much slower than I had anticipated and it was clear that, especially with the sun hitting us, we were in temps much higher than the 26 that had been forecast, it was easily over 30. The road continued undulating for another 2km before a steep incline landed us a hundred metres higher again. This continued gently undulating for another 2km before the final kilometre climbed another 200m or so. I was nearing the end of my tether. I hadn't had water in three kilometres, having started partly dehydrated anyway. I hadn't gone to the toilet since 3am and my pace was shockingly slow for someone "fit". Regardless, the final locked gate came into view and that spurred me on up the last 150m of road to the pressure reducing station. Once there I drank a litre of water within 20 seconds, water had never tasted so good! We poured water over ourselves, took shoes off, sat around and enjoyed life again. Filling up with two litres of water we headed off again for the final 2-3km of track back to the van.
Several hours later, when I finally did manage to relieve myself, I was quite shocked at the colour, and concluded that yes, this had been the most dehydrated I'd ever been in my life.
Regardless, it was an amazing weekend with spectacular views. Pictures can be found here.

Snow fun!

Three ultimate frisbee scenes...

1. There's just been an opposition throwaway and a quick turnover. I run to the grounded disc, lying just inside the playing field several metres from my own endzone. My team reacted quickly and there are a couple of boys running long, they're pulling away from their defenders who were caught off guard and didn't react quickly. From the right corner of my vision I see a defender running towards me to get a force on. As far as I can see there's no choice, I have to throw one hell of a huck - it will be a beautiful inside out backhand - one of the longest I can throw to hopefully make the endzone and safely into the hands of my team-mate without being snatched by the defence. I line it up, almost as though I'm pulling off the line except this time i don't have my three steps. With my pivot foot planted i lean to my left and wind up, I pull my arm from the shoulder and extend my right arm for the release...

2. I've got a hard backhand force on my offender. I'm well positioned on the balls of my feet, my legs are slightly bent, bit more than shoulder width apart (I have long legs...), bouncing a little with good arm positioning.
"NO BREAKS!" I hear called, I jump slightly further around as he turns to look for what I assume to be an easy dump pass. But something isn't right. As his body turns I watch his eyes and head and they don't seem to turn with the body, he's faking! Just after I land further around his side he completes his fake motion and quickly rotates back to his backhand throw position. I see it now all in slow motion, he's wound up, stretching right out and looking to make a low, wide backhand throw to a receiver now free, there's only one part of my body that can reach that low and far away in such a short period of time needed to get the block...

3. It's a standard offence against a junk. I'm the middle handler and I've just received the disc from my left handler. I quickly look upfield and notice one of my deeper team-mates cutting back under his wing defender to get free. With my right handler a little further up field I realise we can make some good metres with a swing-upfield series of throws, I line up for a mid-height backhand throw to my right handler...

What happens after all these three scenes? Well...



1. I am jerked awake by the ferocity of my huck. I look to my side milliseconds afterwards to realise that I've narrowly missed hitting the woman sitting beside me on the train in the head with my elbow. She's not overly aware of it because her focus was on the book she was reading off to the other side of her body from me. She looks around anyway but by now my head is no longer in my arms, rather I am now totally bolt upright, having been down there shortly before while dozing off on my train trip home...

2. The only body part I can get to block such a low, wide throw (since I'm forcing quite strongly) is my lanky right leg. I throw my leg out hoping that I get a sweet foot-block. I wake up immediately with a pain streaking through my right foot. I've just fallen into REM on my bed and by throwing my right foot out I've kicked my piano...

3. My mid-height backhand throw also jerks me awake - milliseconds after the extension of my arm is cut short by the pile of boxes that live next to my bed. It's been around 4 minutes since I started to fall asleep the first time. Within the space of two of those minutes I've now hurt my right foot and my right hand.

I think this four nights a week of ultimate frisbee and an extra night of pulling/hucking practice is really starting to control automatic muscular functions...

TR - Where Angels Fear to Tread 263m 17**

In an Herculean effort akin to those I regularly made with my former climbing partner Toby, Dan and I decided that it would be a good idea to head to Mt Buffalo and do the classic climb "Where Angels Fear to Tread"... on a weekend.
For those missing the point here, Mt Buffalo is 1.5 hours from the NSW/Victoria border - in Victoria. As always, we managed to get away "late". I picked Dan up but with no food in the car we had to stop in at my local Woolworths on the way to the freeway. We were on the freeway by 7:31pm, meaning that the 1hr 30 minutes it takes me to get to Goulburn was too long to beat the 9pm sharp closing time of the bakery in Goulburn - which was shut when we arrived at 9:03pm. Damn it. We pressed on regardless, and after an HJ and petrol stop we arrived at the gorge hut at buffalo at 2:15am. We threw our sleeping bags on the concrete floor of the hut and I went out like a light.
The theory was that we would awake at 6am and be racked up and heading down to the route by 7am. After slamming the alarm off and falling straight back to sleep, we awoke around 7:15am. We eventually got going and by the time we were standing underneath the unmissable line it was 9:41.
The first pitch was Dan's - a fist/hand crack that was just off vertical for 5m before it slabbed it up good for around 30m. I watched as Dan used both my #3 camalots and both #4s, managing to also get some #2s deep in the back of the crack where it "thinned". He belayed where the crack turned into a flake briefly, in and amongst some shrubs where the pitch was at it slabbiest. After battling with the first real crack climbing I'd done in a while I was soon at Dan's side - now battling the shrub for the gear attached to my harness as I tried passing for the lead.
The second pitch was supposed to be 30m, a "lovely hand crack flake followed by 20m of offwidth crack". Well, after less than 10m the crack was over and I was staring up at another offwidth with another awkward start. I dived right in to a continuation of the excruciating pain in my feet and the final 3m showed me exactly how hard offwidthing can be. By the time I made it to the belay point the outside of my left leg was scratched ankle to knee, both my feet were in agony and my sunglasses were wedged somewhere above the third piece of gear (to be successfully retrieved by Dan). I was ruing the offwidth crack and seriously wondering how to avoid another 100m of this kind of climbing. Dan followed - grunting, grovelling and cursing his way up behind me to land on the ledge. Even though his left ankle had been taped up there was still a large graze there with blood slowly trickling towards the top of his climbing shoe.
I past the gear on to Dan again for the mega-pitch. A short 3m corner, a 5m slab diagonally left to the start of a 30m offwidth - great, just what my feet wanted, being squished beyond the pain threshold again. He dispatched the slab quite easily, though that was what he had worried about the most. He started the grovelling process again. Up the offwidth. Around the tree, slung. More offwidthing, another tree, another sling. Still more offwidthing, still another tree, still another sling runner. Finally he was above the last tree and had 6m until the crack became slabby enough to belay, however the crack now steepened to provide double the more vertical climbing I'd dealt with at the top of my pitch. So he set off. First started the grunting. Then a curse (almost inaudible under muffled sounds of pain). After a minute of not moving, there was some flurried activity, he rose 6 inches, then panting, more cursing, more muffled sounds of pain. This process continued for another10 or so minutes, inches being won in the vertical battle, until finally he whaled onto the slabbier part of the pitch and set up a belay. I then followed, I was at the start of the offwidth in a minute. I looked up and dreaded it. It was more horrible than the last two pitch combined and seemed almost as long!
The fourth pitch provided some respite. Dan belayed between two steep slabs and what I was now facing was a 2m vertical section to more slabby goodness. The vertical section was quickly dispatched with a thin-hands jam and a solid hand jam over the lip. A high-step and I was firmly in the slabby crack. It thinned from hands to fingers (a welcome relief for my feet!) before petering out completely. Several metres below the top of this crack I had to slab 2m to my right to establish myself in another offwidth crack (not where we belayed, but where I slabbed between the two cracks - this is not us!). Luckily this offwidth crack soon narrowed down to fingers where a long reach (or another move) latched desperate fingers onto a jug and up to the belay. It was easier for me to lead and Dan also followed more easily this time.
The remaining climbing seemed to differ greatly in length and style to what was described in the route description we had. Certainly the "purity" of the line was now over, we'd done in 4 pitches what seems to be described as 5 in the book (about 140m of the crack line according to our topo). In the remaining 60-100m of climbing (it's hard to judge exactly how far we went due to the general disjointed blocks we climbed past) we came as close to face climbing as you can at Buffalo, some slabby cracks, some short cracks, some finger cracks, a bit of a slabby move here and there, and eventually we ploughed into Burston's Crevasse, much to our joy!
I next checked the clock at 5.11pm, meaning it took us just over 8 hours to do the climb. While it was enjoyable now that the experience is over, I'm really dreading having to do climbing like that again. A bit of a problem given the amount of easier climbs at Buffalo that climb similarly...