A hot weekend at Arapiles saw us baking in dry 40oC heat in the Pines.
Swimming in the fire dam, somehow avoiding death by rope swing, and not catching any fish
And hiding in nice cool caves (well I did anyway).
In conclusion: lying on cool shady rock on a 40oC is much cooler than sitting in my un-airconditioned apartment on a 40oC day. Climbing in the sun is not the coolest option.
Commencing trepanning in 4 seconds….
First time on rock in over five months (aside from a brief flirtation with the You Yangs for the sake of some advertising material; however, as that involved nothing more than standing around and looking like climbers, it doesn’t really count for much). It was a weekend of nearly full moon, no night climbing, but some night photography. Time spent lazing in the sun, climbing rock, watching other people climbing rock, and getting hungry due to the impact of the global shellite shortage on the Wimmera area supermarkets.
The photo below of the Plaque and view out to the south of Arapiles; taken around midnight on Friday with a camera so fancy it’s a wonder I even managed to work out which button to press to make the photo in the first place.
Places that are not good to leave your camera: The top of the Pharos, at Arapiles, where you can only get to it by roping up and climbing back up to it. Do not leave your camera by the rap station, then realise you don’t have it any more once you are at the bottom. It is TOO LATE to go back and get it. This is especially a bad idea when it proceeds to rain for the next 24 hours.
NOTE – This story ended well however, and is not another in the ‘Reasons I Should Not Own A Camera’ vein. The camera was rescued and is in full health.
So, we went to Arapiles, despite the dubious weather forecast. We climbed, it rained a bit, we sheltered under boulders, climbed some more, got rained on, climbed again, Sair found booty, had a delicious pub meal at Natimuk, slept, got up, climbed, I found booty and then climbed some more. Then I ate Squinky the Candy Cane Elephant as we drove home. It was an uneventful weekend.
spent the weekend at arapiles. we didn’t get a whole lot done. wandering up a climb on dunes buttress on sunday, we managed to spend at least an hour sleeping on one of the belay stations, watching the hoards streaming up missing link, with none of us feeling particularly motivated to do the final pitch of our own climb. in the end i was convinced to do it, on the grounds that i’d been climbing the longest – despite my defence that it was someone elses turn, as i’d just led the last pitch (just being probably an hour ago by the time we got around to moving again) . and my convincing arguments that corey should do it because he was stronger, or that maria should do it, because she’d led the first pitch. all of this over 25 metres of grade 12, mmm, sweet summer apathy.
a few photos from the trip …
corey’s attractive rope, shimmering in the sunlight
