news & eggs from up north!

Yep, thats right - Mum came through with the goods once more! With Easter done & dusted I can now sit back, relax and try to keep the cat off our hoard! Thanks mum! You're the best! Love Brett & Maria!

More importantly, also in the package was a newspaper snipping that went under my radar (strangely I don't get the West Logan Leader down here...) but I thought I'd share it as I'm so proud of his humility & grace in all his years since...

You can click on the article to read it. 

megalong easter

This easter, with myself & Maria squeezed between work, uni & full easter flights, we only managed to scurry up to the Blue Mountains for a short getaway. We were greeted by freezing temps & gloating from the Gold Coast - apparently it was quite nice at the pin on the weekend! 

After losing 2 hours of our lives in a jam between Springwood and Wentworth Falls, we made it to the Megalong Valley, SSW of Blackheath, off the plateau, and we camped just below the Hydro Majestic. Due to the delay we ended up setting camp in fading light (and temp!).

So we unpacked quickly, got a fire going and cooked dinner over the fire... good times!

I make fire. I am man.

Nick wore flano's to help us blend in with the 'wildlife'...
The next morning we headed further south and passed through the 'green gully' to the end of the road and the National Parks trail head in the Kanangra-Boyd... It was an amazing spot where we picked up a few leeches and had a nice lunch - definitely planning to get back there for some hiking!
We also scoped another spot for a camp-out, by a nice river and a bit more 'in the bush'...

yep, caught Nick smiling on camera!

Back to camp for sunset beers and some sensational swedish meatballs!

Whilst we collected firewood, the girls set up camp nicely for dinner and Nick proved his manhood by starting a fire with wet wood whilst I drained his lovely home-brew! Good times!

Oh yeah, Happy Easter!

back at boyce

I've gotta say that I've really been enjoying Mt Boyce lately, as shown by heading up there again yesterday! I caught up with Liam & Angela again and drove up with some multipitch trad in mind and there was no complaints from me when we decided on 'Wild is the Wind' (15**) near Solo Gully at Mt Boyce. Apart from a short climb near the top a while ago, I've never really explored this area and from where we based ourselves, at 'Walk-down Gully' (how do they come up with these names...), I was impressed! The whole area has very featured climbs going up everywhere with a nice spread of grades, mainly trad. I like.

We wandered around the base and started up the first pitch of WW, a hairy traverse, then easily up to a nice belay. You can see we were using Liam's double ropes, a first for me - handy but kinda cluster-fucky. Then it was my turn to lead up pitch 2 which went quite nicely with a fun, cranky start then a traverse into a little wall climbing with a fair few bolts leading to the greatest belay ledge ever! We should have brought lunch! Great views and very spacious...

Liam then prepares to step out into nothing-ness for the start of pitch 3, a few very cool moves here!

and up!

Angela contemplates... and swings out!

After lunch, Angela jumped on 'Gently Mine' (14**), a lovely flake/crack with fun moves the whole way. Unfortunately I don't have pics as I was on belay duty but hopefully I'll get some emailed to me soon... After I cleaned, we rapped off and Liam led the spectacular 'Gates of Janus' (16**), an awesome corner crack just a few meters to the right...

After that we began the near vertical bash out of the gully back to the car - another great day in the mountains! 

mt boyce & manly by moonlight

Well, snuck up to the Bluey's again, this time with Maria for a relaxing day in the sun at Mt Boyce (again). We took it easy and climbed Sweet Irish (10) and The Eyrie (12**). It was good to get back on The Eyrie but Sweet Irish was a bit of a let down, I thought it looked nice on it's own little buttress thing but it was a pretty straight forward clip up with tons of gear options also.

Cheesy moment at the P2 belay on The Eyrie

Looking out west towards Penney Arcade, which goes up the shadow lined arete

Always time for a thirst-quencher on the way home!

On the way home we were treated to an awesome moonrise, so I snapped off a shot once home... What a great day - I LOVE autumn in Sydney! 

dam, manly.

So, I went for a walk up to Manly Dam yesterday, for the hell of it... It's about 5km from home then there's a few circuits up there, I did the 7km one - it's pretty long and windy covering all sorts of terrain from swamp and creeks to dry bushy spots - more hilly & longer than I thought it'd be too! After all the rain we had on Saturday there was water everywhere with the creeks a torrent and the dam quite high - blocking a fair chunk of track too! So I got wet boots and also had a close encounter with a decent size Black Snake, I've lots of pics but none of the snake - no chance of me hanging 'round for that!