more b-joey

Well, the sun was out so Serge & I headed back up to the good ol' barrenjoey for our climbing fix... We're all loving the days getting longer now that spring has sprung - we only started climbing at 3pm but still managed 3 climbs with all the mucking about...

Serge led out warm up on 'Mike's Cop-out' (10) for a nice start to the arvo;
(sorry for the dodgy iphone pics!)

Happy at the top!

After that, I felt like stepping up my (rather weak) game and decided to have a crack at Marsupial Smearer (18)... 18 is pretty much my limit (soft i know!) and it pretty much showed. It's nice to have the crux 1m off the ground, so I fiddled around until I thought I had it dialed and shot up! using a totally different sequence to what I was thinking, but hey - it worked. I rushed up, clipped the first bolt and realised I hadn't thought past it, looked around whilst clinging to tiny crimps (tiny for my fat fingers!) and ... slumped onto the draw. It's amazing what 30 seconds of hanging around on a climb can do - I leapt back on and found the right moves and the next thing I knew, I was clipping bolt 2! Happy days... I then moved to the sloping crack, plugging gear like mad, finding the climbing easy - back in my element, chunky! Next thing I knew I was only a mantle and a step-up to the anchors... I was pretty stoked to tell the truth, but now I'm pretty motivated to get back up there and get it clean! So I got to the top and...

"BELAY ON!" (mmmm cheesy!)

...and Serge cleans

I like this shot, looks far steeper than I remember!

We topped out right as the sun set

So, with the sun setting, we thought it'd be a good idea to head up another, this time 'Tropico' (15) for Serge...

At 15, his hardest lead on gear yet, so he was pretty stoked. By the time I followed it was pretty much dark in the undergrowth so I was feeling for holds and hoping not to find any funnelwebs so I powered up and we rapped off stat! After jamming our gear into our packs we scooted off in the dark using Serge's phone for a light... it was pretty bright - it shone bright enough to light up the rock he slipped on, his bag overbalancing him and he rolled his ankle over! This widened my view of german vocabulary! He was not impressed! Hopefully the frozen peas we chucked on it will do the trick and we'll hammer Mt Boyce together next week. Fingers crossed!