101 Reasons Why Its Great To Be An SA Climber

This is only a few of them.  There are probably more than a hundred others:

I find that other people who are also passionate about climbing are instantly recognizable to me amongst non-climbers.  There is something about them that I immediately relate to.  Somewhat surprisingly I hadn’t seen any other climbers in the camp site during our stay.  I was washing the dishes on our last morning when a climber walked by behind me.  I introduced myself.  We chatted.  Yes, he was also doing trad, Tim said, and yes, him and Marian intended to do Energy Crisis.

I had had a longer than expected day on Energy Crisis a few days before.  Sebastian had hit a psychological wall on the traverse pitch – the challenge of stepping off from a relatively secure place into one of total insecurity.  The foot rail ending abruptly several metres short of the end of the traverse.  Horribly undercut with very big air below.  Luckily the stance was a comfortable one, because I was there a long time.

Perhaps in retrospect the route was not a great choice for the boys, 11 year old Luke and 13 year old Sebastian.  I had to use all my parenting affirmation skills to talk Sebastian into eventually committing past the end of the foot rail.  There was a lot of silence and waiting, a lot of countering of his teary “I can’t do it’s” with my increasingly strained “I know you can’s.”  He wanted me to lower him to the ground.  I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t end up at the end of the 50 metre rope still some way off the deck.  And then we would be a hell of a lot worse off than we were already.

He quickly transformed back to his chatty, joking self as soon as he eventually reached the security and companionship of the stance.  Luke had to go back to retrieve the closely spaced, abandoned cams along the traverse.  Some of them were tricky for him to get out, as he was too short to use his feet and see into the rail.  By now Energy Crisis was turning into a full day mission.  I needed to hurry if it wasn’t going to extend even further.  I didn’t think about how easy it would be for the boys to retrieve the gear from the stance.

When Sebastian was ready to climb, one of the cams was out of his reach above him in the roof crack. Even with him hanging in the rope higher up and then with Luke lowered to assist, the cam remained stuck, probably having walked into the crack.

I had to make a call whether to abseil down to retrieve the cam, one of the newer additions on my rack, or abandon it.  Its never an easy choice to abandon gear.  But I was worn out from the emotional drain of the traverse pitch, there was still another pitch above, and dark was fast approaching.

Even with a spectacular sunset finish on the summit of the Energy Crisis Prow, one of those truly amazing high points that we as climbers are privileged to inhabit, there was a bit of a downer feeling amongst us about the stuck cam.  And we were all very tired.  We abbed off into the gloom of the deep cleft near the Robot, with very little visibility left.

A few days after getting back home from our trip I got a WhatsApp from Marian, who I knew only from the minute or two we’d chatted in the camp site: “Hi Johann.  I have your .75 cam.  Let me know when you’ll be in town so we can meet up?”  Certainly one of the reasons why its great to be an SA climber is that you’re firmly connected, by a shared passion, to a community of very cool people.