I realise that I have been a climber for close to 25 years.
Never been a great climber – my hardest ascent was a soft-touch 25 – but back in the early 1990s I established a bunch of routes down at Nerriga and was the major developer of the Babylon crag out in the bush west of Nowra.
I am now 54 years old and can hardly expect to climb at a very high level, nonetheless I go to the climbing gym once a week and occasionally climb outdoors at Mt Keira, Nowra or the Blue Mountains. A few years back, even spent a few weeks at the Greek climbing mecca of Kalymnos, completing a set of 52 (my age at the time) on-sight ascents up to French 6b.
We recently moved to a house on the edge of the Illawarra escarpment. Surprisingly enough, there are a set of three well-formed sandstone boulders just a short walk beyond my back fence. They are not all that large and the surrounding bush can get fairly damp, but I have discovered a set of problems that seem to have been miraculously formed right at my limit. Risking mud, leeches and mosquitoes, I have become increasingly absorbed in successfully climbing each of one of them.
My aim in this diary is to provide an account of these efforts. This will involve straightforward description of problems, attempts and the like, but will also address other related aspects of the process, whether it is keeping up with the latest developments in world climbing (via the German site www.8a.nu) or rashly pursuing a range of adjunct activities, such as dieting (climbing is all about strength to weight ratio) and intermittent devotion to specific training regimes, including, for instance, yoga exercises (climbing is also all about flexibility) and core strength training (climbing is also all about core strength). Within this context, I also plan to make a dedicated effort to watch the upcoming season of The Biggest Loser (entitled The Next Generation, http://thebiggestloser.com.au/), seeking fanciful means of identifying my ‘journey’ with the ‘journey’ of the show’s miraculously shrinking participants. This is all to acknowledge that I am aware of the absurdity of my bouldering efforts, but at the same time can hardly deny their abiding importance for me.