Brothers Bouldering at the Balkans

The big wet has continued in Sydney but we did manage to dry a few holds and manage a few problems down at the Balkans today. It was great to get out with Steve just back from nearly 4 weeks in the UK and France.

Steve had a great day doing a few new problems including two V4s and V3 highball, a solid effort considering the top outs where all wet. Steve did Snakebite (V4) second go which was a tad embarrassing as it took me ages to work out the sequence.
I had a fun day doing a few problems I had done previously and one new V5 called the Arms Race, unfortunately the wetness has kept me off most of the projects. Still a good afternoon with Steve and hopefully the weather will improve for some roped climbing next week.

Toddlers Paradise

We recently started turning our backyard into a toddler's paradise complete with a cubby house and kitchen set (yes, I know we have boys however Lachie LOVES cooking for us in his little house and I plan on raising a SNAG anyway ;-)) , swing set, climbing gym thingy and car. Only things left to get is a little sand pit and later in the year I believe Santa is delivering a trampoline!!! I, I mean, the boy's will love it, I'm sure!!

What has been very cute is watching Lachie make us all kinds of culinary treats such as chicken milkshakes and he thinks the chicken drumstick is an ice cream and the steak, a piece of chocolate. When he cooks something for us and asks us to eat it, in a serious voice he emphasises the food is just pretend though LOL

Anyway, had to share a truck load of photo's of the hours of fun that have already been had so far... it's a bit of a Lachie overload so I promise I'll be back soon with an update on Ryan!


Just after we put together his kitchen set -
he's making a milk shake in the blender
that actually spins


Not a great shot but it shows the new cubby


Master Chef in the making


Enjoying the sausages he just cooked


Mmmmm, about to make me a chicken milkshake
by the look of things!


Enjoying his 'ice cream'




A plane, a plane


New set of wheels

Climbing (and falling) at Newcastle

Had a good days climb with Gav at Glenrocks in Newcastle. This little crag has some nice sport routes with lots of bolts and fun climbing. Gav and I have now done about half the routes here and have a few projects still to go. Today we managed one of the 23s but fell off the steeper route a couple of moves from the top. I got some poor footage with camera perched in a tree but the fall at the end is worth watching the clip for.

We finished the day working an open project that is super hard. It offers easy climbing to the last bolt followed by 9 desperate moves on small crimps, pockets and sidepulls. We are making good progress on the technical crux sequence that would be about V7 so who knows what grade the final result will be - if/when it goes!

Bouldering in Perfect Conditions

The last week has seen Sydney hit with cold dry winds from Antarctica - perfect for bouldering! And I have been lucky enough to get some climbing done at the Balkans and at Gavin's local crag in Newcastle. Added to that I was able to go and see the Lee Cossey slideshow, all in all a great week.

Gav and I finally got some dry conditions at the Balkans to do a few of the outstanding projects. Gav and I got up Sloper-dan (V5 pictures above) easily and I managed Aktar, Balme Us Scots and Battle of the Shorts all V6 along with a few V4 and 5s. The highlight (for Karla and Lachlan at least) was winding myself falling of the top of the Flying Gurkha as seen at the end of this video - enjoy.

Looking forward to going climbing in Newcastle tomorrow and working on a new route with Gavin - should be a technical wall if we can link the moves.

Fun with Thomas!

I was recently excited to find out about a place with miniature Thomas the Tank Engine train's that you could have rides on. Excited because we have 1 very big Thomas fan in this house (no, not Baz ;-)) and just knew he'd have a blast seeing Thomas in real life.

So, that is where we went today and Lachie was also thrilled to have his Nanny along for the trip! We all had a great time even though it was freezing and the rain was kind enough to hold off right until the last train ride.

First ride of the day with Nanny




Finally a ride on Mavis! He was most insistant!


Woo hoo - Thomas with Mummy!


The surrounds...


The hat I took for Ryan was too small so he had to
wear Lachie's hat & look like a Mongolian baby!

Making the most of a few dry hours

The weather has been awful and every crag soaking so there has been very little bouldering of late, but we did get a few hours climbing in on Friday. The crag was still wet and only a handful of problems were dry down at the Balkans but it was still to get out.

Gav made the trek down from Newcastle and looked strong. Despite the wet conditions Gav managed to send Diplomatic Solution (V4). A solid effort considering the humidity and strange sequence Gav uses.
Gav and I then moved onto Flubdub (V6), I have done this problem previously but was attempting to add a sitdown start (V7?). Gav went very close as did I but the humid conditions made the last hard move very desperate. The start hold on the sitdown was also damp so in the end I was happy to get so close - I have fallen off the last move about a dozen times now.













We moved back to the main wall and played around on Pockets of Resistance (v7). The holds on the roof where mostly dry but the slopers on the exit were damp so we knew the problem wouldn't go today but were hopeful of working out the moves in anticipation of some dry weather next week. We made good progress but it is hard to say how difficult turning the lip will be - it felt desperate on seeping slopers.













We were fast running out of light but had a just enough time to check out a problem niether of us had tried before Blame Us Scots (v6). The problem is nice little number with an undercling upto a Font like mantle. Once again we found a few crucial holds were wet (actually covered in green slime!). We tried to by pass all the wet holds and top out on only the damp slopers but to no avail. Seems we have another project for a dry day... if that ever comes.

In all a good day. We send some V4s a few other new problems and it was good to get back on the rock after weeks of rain. Once the weather improves there should be some good problems to complete - stay tuned.

Busy weekend!

Just realised we've been bad bloggers! Set up our blog and then abandoned it pretty much - oops.

Lachie has been at Nanna's the last couple of days and will be returning Monday afternoon! So our unplanned, long weekend has suddenly become one we want to make the most of in terms of getting lots done around the house - not very exciting but very much necessary nonetheless.

It all started when we realised we needed to try and make the most of our bland and very un-exciting backyard and 'try' to turn it into an exciting oasis fit enough for even the fussiest of 2 year olds. Being a rental, there is only so much we can do but I've been busy trawling through ebay looking out for swing sets, cubby houses and sand pits. The piece de resistance (spingfree trampoline) will be coming from Santa a little later on. God knows how it's all going to fit but we'll make it!

While I've been doing all the hard work ;-), Baz has been whipper snipping the lawn getting it ready to mow. The poor love managed to whipper snip through a hidden dog poo and copped it square in the face! Apparently laughing uncontrollably was not the right reaction from me - oops LOL.

On top of our back yard blitzing, earlier today Baz saw a mouse in our garage!!! How gross! We have a double garage which is packed to the brim as we moved from a larger house to this smaller house 18 months ago. So it's packed with furniture and signs (from Baz's sign business) and all the things that you generally chuck in a garage so it doesn't clutter the house and no - the poor car most certainly doesn't fit in there! So thanks to this mouse, it forced us to clean out, sort out & chuck out all kinds of things. Have been putting it off for ages, so I'm very happy it's now all done.