Bouldering, Dance & Bikes

Weekend of the 28th November 1998

We had sanctioned this weekend as an official 'no climbing' weekend. To start off the weekend Nick and I went bouldering at Burnly Bridge in Melbourne. First of all I checked out an excellent bluestone bouldering area called Richmond Bridge. It is similar in formation to Indooropilly Bridge but has much better rock and lots of good featured holds. I almost cranked one of the traverses first go but got really pumped and fell off. You have to be careful as its only a footpath betwen you and speeding cars! I also soloed a few short problems which required a hand traverse above the traffic to get back to the ground! I only climbed on a small part of the wall, there were at least anther five areas just near this bridge. After doing that I met Nick at Burnly and cranked hard. I finally achieved a full traverse from right to left (with a million falls) of the wall and in the process removed all the skin from my hands. The last couple of metres were just exxtreme pain resistance! The area is so pumpy, you are trashed within fifteen minutes of getting there!

We planned to go to a big outdoor rave, Earthcore, on the saturday night so we headed back to Nick's to pack. While waiting I tried on Nicks new plastic mountaineering boots. Very cool and they even fit me! He now owns a full mountaineering setup, gortex top and bottom, fleece, plastics & 8mm rope. We set off up the Hume to Mt Dissapointment State Forest about 100km north of Melbourne. The rave was deep within the park and was huge. Four stages, about 10,000 people and heaps of tents stretching literally many kilometres into the bush. A modern day Aquaries Festival! It looked like a fair propertion of the ravers were not prepared for a camping weekend. It was bloody freezing, about 10' at night and it was even raining a bit. We raved away until about 4am, moving betwen the four areas. One area had an outdoor Saturday Night Fever flashing light disco floor. The sound coming from the area was huge, I am sure it must have killed some little possums! We crashed in the tent and awoke at around 12pm to the sound of more constant driving beats. We stumbled out and walked up to the dance area which was still going off! Crazy drug dudes.... We were seriously un-prepared and had forgotten to get any food so alas we had to bail early and find some food other than the one stall which sold dodgy egg and bacon rolls. We ate a poor bakery out of all its stock and continued on.

Anyway it was a good excuse to go MTB riding in the forests around the rave sight. Nick knew of some excellent downhills so we went there. The first one was called Jehovah's Track and was very nice. Similar in width and style to parts of the Telecom Track but much longer. There was some good rutted bits that my dualie just cruised over. We did truck runs so no uphill riding was required! The last ride of the day was Nick's and I sent him down an 8km downhill which was a complete mission to drive to the bottom of. We were not sure where the track came out at the bottom so I drove 40km down and around the base of the mountain looking for him. I evetually found him, he made it down only just behind me doing 100km/h on the road. I think the downhill track is more direct than the car road!