A JOURNEY THROUGH DARKNESS AND LIGHT

This narrative is bookended by accounts of climbs of Ozymandias Direct (aid) and Flight Of The Phoenix. Beta and detailed info for climbers is at the end of the narrative.

Part 1                 Forebodings

OZZY

“Ozymandias Direct”, a rockclimb at Mt Buffalo, Victoria, 300 meters, one of the longest and most renowned climbs in Australia. December 2021.

Suspended from slings 200 meters above the sucking void on Ozymandias, I dropped the camera and watched it zoom down in a spinning arc to crash into the scrub, lost, way below – after we had just finished the hardest sections of the climb and were now on somewhat easier pitches to the top. I was unaware that this might have been an omen of things to come – my own fate aligned to that of the tough little red camera that had accompanied me on so many adventures.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­——————————————————————————————

A song and a poem – “Ozymandias” by Shelley (the source of the climb’s name) and “Viva la Vida“ by Coldplay had somehow become entwined together in my psyche.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing around remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”                 Shelley, Ozymandias

What is the worth of a life?

Death, whatever do we leave behind?

Monuments? To matter for a while?

Unknowns – cosmic consciousness, God, the random chances of life.

Challenge – the rope and our skills the lifeline that keeps us safe

Above the growing, beckoning space below.

Like edgework, dipping a toe into the abyss

Not cheating death, just opening the door a crack

Into our own mortality.

Even the hard, vertical granite isn’t permanent,

Minerals once deep under the earth’s crust,

Eventually eroding to dust.

A different timescale.

Geological epochs shrink a human lifetime

Into a mere split second,

Across the ebb and flow of the universe.

Hanging. Two good bolts and an old rusty one. Below “The Big Roof” – pitch 7. Matt fed the lead rope through his device while I managed the flow our two ropes. We chatted and photoed. Greg moved up smoothly, aid climbing up a ladder of old rusty bolts until he was at the roof. He reached out and placed a nut in the crack and tentatively moved out, gingerly transferred his weight. Then again onto a small cam. At the lip he struggled a small metal nut into the thin crack, 180m of yawning air below. Combining strenuosity and delicate care he pulled through onto the wall above the roof, repeated, and then was out of sight to us.

The ropes pulled up a little.

“Scream!!” In an instant Greg was dangling, swinging in space below the roof. Swimming in the ocean of emptiness between the waterfall and Mt Bogong on the horizon. Like a giant spider on our 10mm diameter nylon thread. His top two pieces had ripped out as he’d tried to place a higher one. In climbing terminology this was a definite whipper. Spectacular. Matt and I gulped at the epic dimensions of the situation. Ozymandias Direct, the “King of Kings” of Australian big wall climbs, Mt Buffalo North Wall. A “vast and trunkless leg of stone standing” high above the valley.

Greg had plunged from above The Big Roof. He didn’t seem to be afraid of falling. A terrifying screamer over the lip into the beckoning void below. Swinging in space. Then he just got on with the job. Pulled himself back in and up to the roof then tried again. Had he taught himself how to do this? I had only taken a few falls in my climbing career. The biggest one had been while leading a new route on the bottom tier of Point Perpendicular. I had checked it all out on abseil first and removed some loose rock. At about 2/3 height, having done the hardest part I reached up to pull myself onto a triangular shaped ledge. As I did this the whole ledge eased outwards. As an automatic reaction I tried to push it back in. Of course this didn’t work on the fridge sized block but it probably saved my life by propelling me backwards away from the plummeting block. Miraculously it missed hitting my rope and also one of the Ians below – one was belaying me off to the side and the other was lounging around nearby. The rock exploded at the base while I was brought to a stop in mid air by the rope. Completely uninjured I dusted myself off, regained composure and led up to the top, a little slower. One Ian never climbed again. I named the climb “Into the Mystic”.

              I can hear the seabirds sing

              Feel the sea and touch the sky

              Let my soul and spirit fly

              Into the mystic                            Van Morrison

Confident, committed, muscles bulging. Greg hauled himself back into the rock. Climbed back up to the lip then placed new tiny protection pieces in the crack above and moved stealthily upwards. Out of sight again. In his more regular climbing exploits Greg is a roof specialist, thrashing himself on some of the hardest climbs in our region. Hanging upside down and falling. He seemed unfazed. His extensive experience in this hostile upsidedown world had conditioned him to respond with passionate self-possession?

——————————————————————————————

2020. A year earlier Matt and I had attempted Ozzy. All had gone well early on – logistics, hauling, teamwork, climbing. Then on the crux 3^rd pitch I had led up the tenuous, thin aid (harder than anything Greg and I had done on the Nose of El Cap two years before that). In a moment of premonition I placed a dodgy micro cam and looked down at a bulge below and thought “if this comes out I will likely clip the edge of the bulge on the way past”. This is exactly what happened. Like a fall from grace. My ankle hurt but otherwise I was ok. So I pushed on back up and to the next belay and then to Big Grassy, the bivvy ledge. We stayed a comfy night on our portaledge. In the morning I removed my shoe and sock to reveal extensive bruising, swelling and pain.

We made the decision to bail out as I couldn’t guarantee to be able to lead all the 6 remaining pitches and Matt was still learning the ropes of big wall climbing. We abseiled down, Matt with the haul bag. Then we hiked slowly back up the southside of the gorge – me with a light pack and Matt with half our heavy stuff. Fit as a fiddle and keen as mustard Matt then hiked back down again and up with the rest of the heavy stuff.

The colossus of granite had remained lifeless, unaware of our comings and goings, rooted in deep time. I had felt deflated. Humbled. Weak. Fleeting. Damaged. Long Live Life – “Vida La Viva” – my favourite motivational theme song now came back to haunt me. I had been the king of my own climbing world. Now “One minute I held the key, Next the walls were closed on me, And I discovered that my castles stand, On pillars of salt and pillars of sand. I used to rule my (the) world”. Now my place in that world seemed a little insecure. In the overall scheme of things what were our climbing achievements worth anyway, in the long run? Around the corner in Australia lay fires and floods and covid and war.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida – Live in Sao Paulo  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZvsGmYKhcU

The ankle was fractured. I was 63. Could I come back from this? My aging arms were seeming to whither away before my eyes. Would I have a weak and painful ankle from now on?

————————————————————————————————–

Matt had got us up to the big roof the day before, on Day 2. He’d led pitches 5 and 6 with finesse up thin cracks and the beautiful long corner, then stretched out across a blank wall past old bolts to the hanging belay.

On our approach day, Day 1, we had carried everything down into the Gorge and up to the base of the north wall. While I sorted out the bivvy on the ground and filled the water bottles from the stream Matt had led pitch 1 and then Greg led the long hard aid pitch 2. Hungry possums and mossies invaded our slumber overnight.

——————————————————————————————

The ankle healed surprisingly fast. A deep love of climbing, the mountains and of being active in natural landscapes kept drawing me back to thoughts of Ozzy. I started researching training for older climbers and unexpectedly found info on the possibilities of muscle building even after diminishing testosterone levels during aging. Consultations with a top climbing nutritionist and a sports physiologist led me into a detailed training and eating program. Results started to show, my confidence and capabilities developed. Greg launched me jubilantly into hitherto never before even contemplated, steep, overhanging sport climbs. My running fitness improved as well.

————————————————————————————————–

After our bivvy on the ground we ascended, on Day 2, up our fixed ropes to the high point at the top of pitch 2. I challenged myself to lead pitch 3. We had brought some better (DMM) micro cams. Time slowed down, the world closed in, fear bubbled away in the background, concentration focused on each single component of the climbing process. “Watch me here. I’m at the bulge, Moving up Matt.” Micro cam, cam hook, good wired nut. Tension eased, the view, the rock, the landscape, mates. Life is good. “Safe.” Greg then led some more difficult aid on pitch 4 up to Big Grassy. No falls, no blood. Overnight I curled myself between some rocks while the others slept on the portaledge.

(the next day, after the Big Roof) “Ropes fixed.” “Yahoo,” Greg. Phew. “Nothing’s gonna stop us now”. I let go from the belay and swung out under the roof. Attached to both ropes for extra safety I soon got tangled up transferring from one to another while swinging free but eventually made it up to smiley Greg at another hanging belay. As we hauled the bag Matt cleaned the gear from the thin crack. Matt then led out right across a blank wall and round an edge out of sight. He quickly dispensed with the wide Fang courtesy of a couple of BIG cams. I took the wandery pitch 9 to a big flat ledge where we could all just relax and stretch out. Matt topped us out up a crack system and an offwidth that gobbled up the big cams again. Afternoon Day 3. Brilliant. The sun shone warm and bright on our celebrations.

I was back in the game. Big time. Firing. My heart was overflowing. The mountains were smiling.

RUNNING

Marathon – April 2022

Dawn. The sky was already bright. Hot blue. 5.30am. The range of hills to the east would shade the route for another half hour or so. For the last hour pre dawn it had been cool, no sunglasses needed through the darkness. Summer. The pointy end of marathon training for Canberra always rolls around January, Feb. 20 to 35 kilometer long runs. You’ve got to be finished by 8.am otherwise you just get cooked. 2 to 3 1/2 hours steady, and longer on the last one under the run walk run regime – run for a kilometer, walk for a minute. I would drive out and hide drinks beside the road in the farmland and bush beside the road the day before. It’s pretty flat, peaceful, quiet. Not much traffic on the country road. Twelve times I trained and ran marathons, mostly alone recently. Lots of time in my own head. Sometimes quiet. Occasional podcasts. Mostly with a playlist soundtrack. 60 to 70 running tunes. Over and over and over again. Like the paces, hundreds, thousands. Cushioned shoes on hard ground. Cool air. Alone. Movement. Wonderful movement of legs and arms and whole body in motion and rhythm. Number 1 at age 34, inspired by a mate. Then several with friends – a loose running group, Sunday mornings together then the bakery. The year 2000 with a friend – the Sydney blue line Olympic trial finishing in the stadium. Supporting others through their own “walls”. And more recently alone, with the music cranking. Lucky with my able body.

Marathon number 12 was a milestone at 65. At the start I was full of gratitude to just make it there, not sick, not injured, feeling ok (especially as Covid had struck me down 6 weeks prior).  New research was out that running in the long term can be good for your body, for your knees. 4 hours 41 – slow, but I managed to maintain run walk run, didn’t hit the wall, came out injury free. And in Marathon Week I reached my other objective of 1000 km and 10,000m of ascent for the year of running! Objectives I set for myself give structure to training, running, getting fitter, stronger. And in each run there’s a visualisation of reaching the goal, probably all tangled up with those feel good hormones that kick in during the latter stages. 

“It’s a Beautiful Day” – U2, as I crossed the finish line as planned, and had hoped for over the past year.

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT – 2022 a few months after the Marathon

Body clocks and biorhythms vary between people and over time. For decades I had run in the mornings but after easing out of regular time committed work my preferred hours moved to the afternoon and the later hours of the day. Occasionally in winter that stretched into the dusk and early evening.

A mixed trail and road route took me undulating round the base of Tuggeranong Hill. From the southern side the sunset blazed back into the Brindabellas shafting the last light from behind a rounded peak.  The gloaming drew me into darkness up through the local suburban streets. As I crested a rise on a narrow path through grassland a full moon rose, silhouetting tall eucalypts. Gently downhill. Easy. Fast pace. Like flying. Endorphins. Breathing matched paces and it felt like heartbeats keeping time. Manfred Mann burst forth “Blinded by the Light”. The world ran with me all in synch. I sang along, my whole body singing. Running like the wind.  Through the cosmos.

FITNESS TEST

Building towards two long awaited and anticipated mountaineering trips to New Zealand, north island volcanoes in September and Southern Alps peaks in November, my fitness and strength was coming along well. For the duration of Covid I had tried to book a high powered University of Canberra Sports Science fitness test including VO2 Max and Max heart rate so I could use the data to make sure my training was maxing out in conjunction with the data from my Garmin watch. On a routine visit to the doctor for some updated travel vaccinations I discussed with him the idea of the fitness test as a double check and he reassured me that it should be fine seeing I was really healthy and fit but if I really wanted to be safe, considering there were some heart issues in my family, I could have a heart scan to be absolutely certain all was ok for me to go ahead. I decided to be super safe and go ahead with the test after returning from overseas.

NEW YORK – June 2022

Bushwick, Brooklyn, is deemed one of the coolest hoods in the world. Visited my son, Matt, after 2 1/2 years of Covid separation. He’d taken me on walks through his Brooklyn, the Jewish quarter, honking streets, quiet brownstones, parks pumping with African American muscle exercise, pampered dogs walking people, Mexican dinners, music. I’d slept in the basement cool for too long and the heat was already building. I jogged the main street towards the water, map and phone and credit card in a pocket. The train tracks raised above the road just amplified and added to the soundscape. A little lost around Dumbo but enjoyed the waterside park. Round and up onto Brooklyn Bridge, walkers, traffic, those famous views 360 degrees. Past halfway across it slopes slightly downhill. I was inside Springsteen’s “Born to Run” underneath the Stars and Stripes hanging from the towers.

Down into the city humidity. Saturated with sweat. Starbucks water, bad coffee and a snack on a park bench with others less fortunate nearby. Steel glass concrete skyscraper homages to the dollar all around.

Wound my way through downtown back towards the river. Doubled back a little lost at times. Slow progress. Kept the fluids up. A long detour past roadworks and foreshore developments to get onto the Williamsburg Bridge. Images from all those past training runs – this could have been my own long imagined international big city New York marathon, helping to get fitness ready for the big ones – those two mountaineering trips to New Zealand. This bridge seemed much longer. A grind. Along the streets and eventually back to the Bushwick apartment. A tiring 20 km. But Big Apple spectacular.

TURKEY             June, July 2022

Istanbul. Bustling, alive, vibrant but with quiet places. Glorious mosques. History at every turn. Where the Oriental east meets European west. Russia just up the Bosphorus and Ukraine nearby. Tacked onto the end of Cath’s work in southern Turkey.

We visited the “Museum of Innocence” which was made by Orhan Pamuk to illustrate his book of the same name – dozens of small boxes (vitrines) were filled with items and special momentos that connected to elements of the story. I was flabbergasted to see this embodiment of an artistic idea that had been percolating in my own head for a decade or so and for which I had been collecting.

Mediterranean. Antalya, Kas, Fetiyhe. Roman and Lycian ruins in the forests, by the ocean, in the fields and right in town.

Summer heat too hot to run. Beaches. Crystal clear water iridescent blue like it’s lit up from within. Cath and I swam and snorkelled and stroked our way through the gorgeous warm ocean. It all felt a little like a long second honeymoon.  Through various beaches and bays along our coastal journey I strung together 10km of freestyling shallows and deeps, feeling free and smooth and strong.

TEST     July 2022

Back home after New York and Turkey I followed up my doctor’s recommendation. Like a large MRI machine. Lying on a board you are slid into a large tube. The coronary CT angiogram makes a series of weird noises around your body during a series of breath holds. I felt good, confident. Didn’t even need the drugs to slow my heart beat (my resting rate was averaging about 43 to 45, supposedly superior endurance athlete level!).

Dad had died at age 65 at his third heart attack in three years. Mum, who had been a nurse in an earlier stage of life, CPRed him back from the first two while waiting for the ambulance but couldn’t manage it for the third one. He worked an incredibly stressful job being responsible for the transport and deployment of munitions through Sydney to naval ships at Garden Island among other major tasks as head of naval supply. He had been a smoker prior to marriage, did not exercise much in later life and probably had some form of PTSD from war service experience. At his first heart attack he retired with 18 months of long service leave owing (foregone holidays). His passing had a big impact on my life choices going forward. From about age 30 I determined to live an active life, eat a heart healthy diet and retire in time to enjoy years of life not working. My job was stressful in bursts and I had a high level of duty of care for those in my responsibility – running was a wonderful release from this. Work and interest in adventure activities kept me quite active, running became a passion, I took care with what I ate and retired at 58 in good health and fitness. My cholesterol was mostly on the borderline between normal and high but never high enough for my doctors to be concerned especially considering my fitness and general health levels.

Back at home after the test Cath teased me about seeking over servicing in the medical profession – obviously she thought it was unnecessary, “Stupid Garmin watch, waste of $400 for the scan” she said.

CCA (Canberra Climbers Association) PRESENTATION            July 2022

I’d been asked to do a presentation for CCA about my journey into climbing that led eventually to New Zealand mountaineering at an older age and to share tips for entrée to this endeavour. Through a series of photos I summarized a long history of rockclimbing and adventure through my adult years and how I had suppressed a deep interest in the bigger mountains. I just was not able to fit in mountaineering between family, work and other things. Then I related how in early retirement on a hiking trip in Switzerland where I was immersed in the most beautiful peaks of The Alps and connected with the history of climbing at the base of the Eiger – all the things I had spent so much time reading about over decades – I was overcome with emotion for the mountains. A short time later time became available which I grabbed at the age of 59 to do a technical mountaineering course in the Mt Cook area. There followed month long trips to NZ each summer for 3 years.

After the broken ankle on Ozzy I had undertaken a detailed nutrition and strength training plan that had worked for me as an ageing climber. In the presentation I tried to share this in a way that might encourage others with similar ageing bodies to realise that improvement was still possible.

I had quickly developed a list of 100 great achievable NZ peaks to climb over the next decades and cast my net wide for partners. The depth of the upwelling emotion in the mountains was a constant surprise and delight. Perhaps its source was in the decades of interest that had percolated inside me which finally had the chance to unfold into reality. I passed on all the tips and insights I could synthesize about moving from rockclimbing to mountaineering in New Zealand and my unbridled enthusiasm for the year ahead that included two trips to NZ (North Island Volcanoes in winter, Tasman area peaks in November), climbing a couple more of my “7 Australian Alpine Mainland Winter Summits”, Blade Ridge on Federation Peak in February and another Yosemite big wall the following September. What a year I was looking into! I hoped that my deep love for climbing and mountains shone through.

OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP MENTORING PROGRAM – SKI TOURING GUIDES COURSE           July 2022

Following retirement from full time work I’d kept up involvement in leading a series of outdoor activity leadership courses for teachers – vertical rescue, bushwalking, rock climbing, caving, canoeing and kayaking, snorkelling, etc. No-one else was really in a position to be able to do this while working full time jobs and having young families. I really enjoyed the work and being in amongst it all with fabulous, super keen, vibrant young adult outdoor education teachers.

During the early part of the pandemic the support structure for this program was threatened. I had been running it for about 10 years while teaching and was reluctant to see it fall apart so I took on the opportunity to strengthen it by developing an upgraded full course during the following lockdowns and restrictions in 2020, then led the whole thing during 2021. A continuous rolling series of big deadlines and commitments meant almost full time work again for long periods of time. By training, assessing and qualifying a large cohort of teachers I was able to ensure the ongoing sustainability of the program as others would have the skills and knowledge and experience to be the future trainers in the course. Towards the end of 2021, having led the whole first program, I looked forward to a low key involvement just leading a sprinkling of occasional courses in an ongoing fashion. However I felt a push to move on from mainstream involvement so decided to run just two more courses that no-one else was qualified to do. At the end of summer 2022 the south coast surf was marginal but we managed enough rescue, surfing and surf leadership sessions at various beaches to get the teachers through.

A ski touring guide course was my very last one. This was one of my favourite adventure activities to instruct – typically students enjoyed it immensely and picked it up fast, the environment was harsh but most often exquisite. Following on from snow skills experience the season before a group 15 of us headed out from Perisher with heavy winter packs in improving weather and good snow conditions.  Uphill. Over Wheatley saddle and down into Betts Creek, navigation, leadership scenarios, teamwork. We set up a base camp in deep snow in a sheltered site below perfect ski slopes – it felt remote and isolated. We built a snow kitchen with shovel sculpted couches of snow. Still, colourful sunset. Everything froze up overnight. Next day skiing, leading, more navigating, avalanche practice, and typical guiding and instructing scenarios, exploring, embracing the fluidity, soaking up the stunning beauty, laughing and sharing. Immersed in a white crystalline world. Moonrise coincided with the sun setting on day two – the fragile round earth rolls through space.

Blizzard conditions were forecast for late on day three. Some more advanced skills and terrain. Packed up. The weather started to deteriorate. We practiced navigating and moving through simulated whiteout conditions then the wind picked up to gale force as we made our way across an exposed saddle – brilliant training conditions that eased in the shelter of the next valley.

Fabulous trip, which was pretty much par for each of the courses. A bittersweet ending to my professional involvement. I would really miss the instructing, facilitating people’s learning in the wilds of nature, making this meaningful contribution to enabling thousands more students participation in deep outdoor adventure experiences and especially sharing the energised camaraderie of a group of young shining teacher stars. It would take a little while yet to appreciate fully the dissipation of 40 years of duty of care at the cutting edge of adventure education and 17 years of responsibility for the program.

Personally the physicality had been a good benchmark for my fitness – heavy backpack, uphill, long strenuous days, constant vigilance of the team, alpine environment – I felt strong and fit – pretty much ready for my first mountaineering escapade into the frozen volcanoes of North Island New Zealand, only a month away!

Part 2                 Falling

RESULTS            Later July 2022

A week after the CT Angiogram and the day after I returned from the ski course my doctor, normally a chatty, friendly bloke, just picked up my report and started reading it, no eye contact. Stenosis, LAD, right main descending, potential flow limiting, CAC… Between the complex medical jargon was enough for me to start to piece together the notion that something was not quite right. He seemed embarrassed, not comfortable. Gradual realization, OMG! What the hell!!! my heart was in shit condition!!! Three arteries with potentially catastrophic blockages including (I found out later) the LAD which was the most serious (commonly known as the widow maker due to its ability to inflict life ending heart attacks). Build up of plaque inside the arteries. And a calcification (hardening) score that was through the roof. Shock. Disbelief. Anger. Bewilderment. Damnit! I’d spent the last 35 years living a life crafted to prevent just this outcome! *@#!?§&! Unbelievable. Tears. I’d only ever had 2 doctors in my adult life and they had both known my family history. My cholesterol levels were always on the borderline of normal and high – “Nothing to worry about there, all your exercise, fitness, diet and weight mean you are safe”, they both said consistently. Blaming now was pointless but hard to prevent. This would have taken years and years to develop.

The doctor gave me a medical certificate for New Zealand so I could cancel both trips and claim back the costs. It was too risky. I was the marathon runner who dropped dead near the end of the race with an unexpected heart attack except I had dodged the end by a streak of darstedly luck. I could have come home from NZ in a wooden box. Would I have to leave behind my beloved big mountains forever? This was a cruel blow – I had only had a few years to properly tangle with the icey peaks, rocky ridges and glaciers of my no longer suppressed dreams. Statins prescription – to keep lipids under control – a little late maybe?

I walked out gutted, dazed. Went in one person and came out another. Genetics. Bugger.

At home Cath took a while to believe what I was saying. It made no sense. How could I run and ski just days and weeks ago with no symptoms? Shared tears in a loving embrace.

SELF INFLICTED?

Three days of furious googling later. Lots of questions and a diagram of the heart and arteries with the report details labeled so I could check my understanding of the “lie of the land”. The cardiologist explained possible interventions – stenting seemed the most applicable, one day in hospital, short recovery time, limited invasiveness. And how did this all come about? In a second brutal twist he espoused his strong view that the calcification and associated blockages were likely caused by damage and subsequent cumulative repair patching of the arteries and veins of the heart due to extensive and long term exertion and high heart rates maintained for long periods during endurance athletic activity – like marathon running and training, carrying big packs uphill for hours on end in the mountains. He added that whenever he goes for a walk around the lake and he sees a runner he thinks that he will maybe see that person at some stage later as a cardiac patient. This notion was almost too much to bear – the idea that something I chose to do because I loved it so much and did it for long term health to prevent ending up like my Dad could contribute to my own heart disease. I became pretty distrusting at this point. I had run marathons with lots of older people who had done way more than me (one fellow had been 70 and was in his 70th marathon and going faster than me).

Completely gutted again. Smashed.

WAITING 1

Time seemed to slow right down. Talked with Matt in New York and Elspeth in Melbourne, tried to reassure them that it would all be ok, that I was fixable. Tried to believe it myself. The chances fate had dealt – shocking bad luck to have had this build unknown over possibly decades, and the golden ticket of good luck to have discovered it now and not ended up alone and cold inside a wooden box in NZ. Yin and Yang. Struggled with remaining positive.

Cancelled out of New Zealand – North Island volcanoes in winter and November on the Upper Tasman and Grand Plateau. Damn. Pulled out of Blade Ridge on Federation Peak in February. Confirmed that I wasn’t going on the Yosemite El Capitan trip (was this the end of my big walling?). A whole brilliant year of big adventures in the mountains switched off in a single swoop down down into the abyss. Just when all seemed to be crecendoing across the crest of the wave. Wipeout. Salty spray leaked down my face.

Swam slowly, jogged very slowly, walked, all the time limiting my heart rate. Tried to stay active. Rested. Read. Googled extensively. Stared vacantly out the window. Contemplated the unknown. Waited in a shadow zone. Elspeth questioned whether I was afraid. Wanted the intervention ASAP. Kept warm through the Canberra cold.

VITRINE 1

Over the last 8 – 10 years a creative project had percolated in my mind and “heart”. Slowly I assembled the bits and pieces in a final collection that coincided with this time. A very old segmented window offered the opportunity to look out and also in. Within each segment would sit a music LP cover of a favourite album from the key adolescent/young adult period of my life. Between the album cover and the glass I would be place a collection of objects that linked with songs from the album and other key life periods. The overall construction of the artwork presented multiple technical challenges and then each segment became a separate puzzle of complexities for me to solve.

While I worked away in a sort of deep personal introspective engrossment on the fine details I played my all time best tracks from these albums that had carried me through as the soundtrack to my life. Springsteen’s Born To Run segment included an old matchbox toy car from my childhood that also resembled the LC Torana that Cath and I really had a blast driving around as young lovers while we played that song loud through the stereo in the early 80’s. That same song has been part of nearly every longer training run for my marathons so there is one of the finisher medals in the corner. Led Zeppelin IV has a Stairway made out of coloured cuisinaire rods from early primary school, two small round Rock and Roll stones, a small plastic Black Dog and Four Sticks attached to the poor firewood collector on the cover. Morning Of The Earth features beach sand and seaweed from the south coast where we spent family holidays and a fin from an old surfboard similar to one I used in my early high school years during the beginning of my life-long love affair with the ocean. The single from the album “Open Up Your Heart” triggered me to develop a playlist of “heart” songs.

IT GETS WORSE

Cardiac ward. Fasting. Gowned up. Mid afternoon on the operating table under lights. Surrounded by med tech and large screens. I tried to monitor what was going on but couldn’t see really – too awkward so I gave up and relaxed into it. Anaesthetic round the wrist catheter site. I could feel the wire going up my arm and into my heart arteries. Eek. The interventionist cardiologist explored and pressure tested the piping and hydraulics. Again I could feel the wire being removed.

“It’s more complicated than we thought and more constricted. There’s a T junction in a main artery that needs work and we can’t put stents in there. I recommend you consult with a surgeon.”

Back in the ward I enjoyed some food. As darkness fell the implications slowly sank in. Heart surgery. This was just like a big black snowball picking up power as it barreled downhill, unstoppable now. The quick, low impact options had melted away into the shadows. La Niña drizzled down the window.

TRIPPLE BYPASS CABG HEART SURGERY (Coronary artery bypass graft). FUCK

WAITING 2

“In the next few weeks we will call you to let you know a few days ahead when you are in”.

But each day passed and no call. The wait and the unknown were excruciating. I just wanted to have it done and then crack on with rehab and recovery. Excruciating.

VITRINE 2

Back in the workspace the vitrine was taking shape. A now rainbow painted model Thomas the Tank Engine from the kids’ train collection was now the Peacetrain in Teaser And The Firecat. There’s also a fabric peace sign badge from an old pair of jeans similar to all the badges and colourful bits I had sewn onto my white flares that I’d worn to pop concerts and festivals in England in my hippyish youth in the mid 70’s. Cath and I had collected notes and coins from a range of countries which became the Money in Dark Side Of The Moon. Next to the famous light refracting triangle I placed my old watch that had stopped “ticking away the moments that make up a dull day”. John Martyn’s Inside Out sort of focussed the whole thing. People experiencing the vitrine could look inside a small compact makeup mirror and see themselves as the young children who had earned the silver and gold stars that were in each corner and also maybe as adults who had lived and grooved through up to 70 years of musical history with a vinyl record, a cassette homemade mix tape, a compact discs and an iPod. They could also listen to the vitrine playlist streaming through the wifi.

A few years earlier I’d orchestrated a “Springsteen” tour of Canberra for friends where we visited places together through the city that linked to their favourite songs, which we blasted out on a car stereo, and rode our motorbikes through the sunset to a friend’s house where we watched the Springsteen On Broadway film and drank Born to Rums. For the tour I gave each person a red The Boss bandanna. The whole thing was a hoot.

After the vitrine was fixed to the wall just inside the entrance to our home I hung my red bandanna from an old nail on the side of the window frame and drizzled on some patchouli so the smell could transport you back to the seventies.

The vitrine, the artwork, the project – perhaps it’s most special value had been the deeply meaningful, fun, beautiful, delight I had in immersing myself in both an introspective and shared reflective review of a selection of some of the essentials of my life. The synchronicity of time and events was surreal.

SIGN IN              Sept 2022

Eventually my day arrived. A small bag with a few clothes, phone, headphones, book and not much else (I had already signed off that I understood the risks of heart surgery – stroke, heart attack, infection, death and lots of other possible outcomes) – not much to accompany me “into the mystic”.

Tom. “Hi. My name’s Peter”. Turned out he was having the same surgeon, same CABG, liked progressive rock. He had a suitcase like he was going overseas.

THE LAST EVENING

After Cath left I spent a while looking out the window, like an onlooker on life – people walking up the footpath below and cars on the street.

I read some of “Phosphorescence” by Julia Baird. A chapter on bioluminescence in the ocean and another on awe. A mind massage that cut away to the essence of life.

Into a long term extended family conflict I attempted to make a small bridge through a heartfelt and honestly vulnerable text message explaining where I was and that life was short.

Unexpectedly I felt a deep sense of peace. Like if my life was going to finish the next day or soon then it was all ok, my life had been good, I had had a positive place in the world, I had made a small difference. The negativity that normally comes to the fore for many of us had dissipated and been outweighed in the overall balance for me in those moments.

I found some beautiful music and played it on repeat, “Spiral” by Olafur Arnolds.

Thought about life, cosmic consciousness, my Mum and Dad looking down from their campfire among the stars by the river of the Milky Way, and of dying.

WAITING IN THE ANTE ROOM

The anaesthetist set me up with various catheters and tubes in both wrists and another in my neck. Minutes slowly ticked by as I waited. Turns out he had been mountaineering in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world. More minutes. We chattered and smiled about climbs we had both done. Tom was taking a long time – I hoped he wasn’t having complications.

OPERATION

Didn’t really grasp that I would lie on the table with tubes into my neck and that my heart would be turned off. Sort of kept alive but at the same time no heartbeat for some hours. Impossible to comprehend. How does a body react to that? What were the effects on my psyche, my brain, my spirit, my self? I was totally unconscious of all of this, in another realm, a dark, timeless void, an in-between world, from where I could have just faded quietly away. While the modern world’s best medical technology and specialist, at the pinnacle of surgery skills, “harvested” veins from my inner thigh, forearm and mammary, split open my sternum to reveal the heart, rerouted my blood out of my carotid artery into a heart lung machine that reoxygenated it and returned it to my circulatory system. The veins were sewn onto the heart arteries to become bypass channels around the blockages. The sternum was wired back together and all the incisions were sewn back together. Electric wires into my heart were fired to restart it again.

WAKE-UP          ICU

From nothingness a hazy consciousness seeped in. My eyes opened on a shadow land.  Lying in bed. Unable to move. Dulled lights. I must have moved a little as a nurse approached and smiled. I tried to smile back but couldn’t move my neck. And I couldn’t talk because something blocked my throat (a breathing tube I found out later). I could lift an arm so I waved weakly. Then slept. I woke and he was nearby, checking, nodding, smiling, asked if I was ok. I managed a small nod. He checked things again and then sat at a monitor nearby. I was in a dream filled with golden light and infused with loving feelings towards the world. The nurse looked at me again. I couldn’t speak. So in a sign of gratitude for his care and concern I put my hands together and nodded a little and smiled. He looked confused. I love using sign language developed in scuba diving – like communicating underwater.

I woke later. Still unable to move or talk. The nurse studied the monitor. Sounds came in from the next room. A light went on outside the curtain screen. There were muted voices. They sounded worried. The nurse went out for a short time. Alone. They were talking about me, I knew it. Panic. Something had gone wrong. They would have to open me up again. Muted voices again and sounds next door. I was sinking. It hadn’t gone well. Fear. I was terrified. Darkness.

Sometime later the breathing tube was removed and I could croak a little. Sleep.

Lights. Brightness. Reclined. The nurse was there. And Cath. I couldn’t move my neck. Tears to see her. It had all gone to plan. All good. In ICU. Tears again at hearing this. The nurse told me he didn’t know what to do in the night when I made a praying signal to him. He thought I wanted a priest. I’m an atheist.  We laughed but it hurt. I asked him about the night terror and he explained it was most likely the morphine. I wondered where the drugs and the golden light and the terror start and end and merge.

Tom told me later that he rose out of his body and looked down to see himself lying perfectly still on a cold, hard, black stone slab. A woman on the ward related how she had seen members of her family past and present standing mute at the end of her bed.

My fingers explored the tubes that had been fixed into my neck. All my movements were restricted. I felt like, and must have looked like, Frankenstein. Cath took a photo which confirmed it.

Elspeth arrived and I cried again and drifted into a sort of sleep.

ON THE WARD

Vulnerable, weak, dependent on others for everything. The nurses were wonderful. Any act of their kindness set me off into tears of thanks.

At some point I could get out of bed and shuffle into the hallway supported by Cath and Elspeth. We sent a video to Matt in New York. While I was narrating the waterworks started again. My “heart” was raw and flowing, uncontrollable, with being alive, with making slow progress, with relief.

On an early walk down the corridor I met Tom and like best buddies with the deepest shared experience we nattered away.

It felt like a truck had smashed into me head on. Everything was sore. So much discomfort. Like a series of small mercies there was a very gradual removal of tubes, drains, catheters and canulas. I cheered when the main line was removed from my neck. The worst and best part was the removal by gentle yanking out of the wires that had been inserted into my heart muscle.

On day 5 I went home. Slept on my back for 6 weeks. Ever so slow easing of discomfort. Slow easing off of the bandages stuck fast like second skin over the harvest sites and up the sternum – aaaarghhhhh. Walked to the other end of the house, then around the yard, hobbled up the street and later eventually round the block.

EMOTE

Small acts of kindness – nurses, Cath being with me through it all and her every little act of love, and Elspeth and Matt being full of support and love and so deeply concerned, friends calling and calling by, random nice things on tv, a favourite song – they all set me off with smiling tears.

PUMPHEAD

Searching the internet I found a group based in Canada for support of athletes with cardiac problems – the Ironheart Foundation I think it was – but you had to live in Canada to access their online program. Now I am no athlete but I did have a decades long history of high level physical activity including marathon running, climbing, hiking, mountaineering etc. I wanted more than the cardiologist seemed to be offering. The rehab program was very basic. I had had no symptoms!

Then I found in my own town a support group for all types of people with cardiac issues. While perusing their website for anything useful I happened upon a film about a syndrome colloquially called “Pumphead”. This syndrome (postperfusion syndrome) was little talked about in the cardiac medical profession. Research is showing that people who have undergone heart surgery using a heart lung machine to provide oxygenated blood to keep them alive can later undergo psychological and emotional changes that can have a physiological origin. Reactions include depression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, neurocognitive impairment etc. It seems that when the blood passes through small membranes in the machine (pump) there is much turbulence necessary for the oxygenation process to take place. During this turbulence tiny debris and air bubbles (microemboli) are carried through the heart and brain and these cause pumphead. Sometimes these reactions in people are long lasting, severe and life limiting beyond what could be expected of their surgery and new life/health situation. Now people who have recently had heart surgery could normally be expected to suffer from some depression and anxiety due to lifestyle changes necessary, ongoing discomfort, fatigue and general decrease in capabilities. I wondered whether my emotional fragility/rawness and underlying positivity was a different expression of this Pumphead syndrome. Whatever it was I welcomed it and didn’t try to hide it away. I wanted to hold onto it, perhaps with a few less public tears. Of course there were times when I was grumpy (sorry Cath) and felt frustrated, angry and depressed but the underlying feel was positive.

HEART PLAYLIST

To lighten the mood and dive deeper into the emotion of the journey I was on I made a heart playlist.

“Hearts on fire, Put a little love in your heart, Heartbreaker, Shape of my heart, Two strong hearts, Head and heart, Total eclipse of the heart, Achy breaky heart, Heart of gold …..”

A lot of the songs were cheesy but there was an occasional arrow straight into the zone of emote. I questioned the whole history, media and mythology associating the physical heart with emotion and love. Where does emotion sit in the psycho cognitive sphere? Surely it’s centred somewhere in a part of the brain – the amygdala, the precuneus, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus working together in some complex combination? But my love emoji is a little pink heart! Is it because when we are falling in love our heart beat speeds up? The heart is a muscle that pumps oxygenated blood to our vital organs.

“Hungry heart, Half of my heart, Piece of my heart, Heartbreak hotel, This old heart of mine, Heart of stone, Don’t go breaking my heart, Fortress around your heart ………”

FRIENDS

In contrast to times in the past where I had been “too busy”, in more recent times I had made significant efforts to call on, support, be interested in and stay in touch with friends who were sick or had recently had surgery or who struggled with life. I felt deeply the love and concern of those friends that took time to generously reach out. Each contact was like a warm embrace that carried me along the path towards recovery. I cherished every moment and it made a great difference. I renewed my own commitment to reach out when life’s waves broke over others and dumped them on the sand.

TOM

My hospital heart buddy and I talked and texted every couple of days, providing support to each other. Talked music, how our symptoms were going, panics we went through when it looked like things might be problematic, sharing tips on how to move correctly and comfortably, diets, exercises, life changes. Later on we met up for coffees. Someone who shares parts of the same journey into darkness provides wonderful reassurance and camaraderie.

SURGEON CONSULT

Of all of the post surgery consultations this was the one I had highest hopes for. Questions tumbled about in my head – how did my heart look, did the op go exactly to plan, etc etc?? This guy was the person who had sliced me open, sawed my sternum in half, exposed my heart, ordered my heart to stop, scalpelled my forearm from wrist to elbow and my inner thigh and “harvested” my veins. Then sewed these new veins as shortcuts onto my heart arteries, ordered my heart to start up again, inserted the wretched drains, wired my sternum back together then sewed up my chest.

Massive disappointment.

All he did was ask if I was going ok and told me the surgery was successful. Then within 5 minutes he shuffled me out. My mind was stuttering with all the insights into what he had exactly found in there and not told me about. Obviously he was a very busy man and had many other patients to see and “save”. I very much appreciated his skill and experience and tearfully expressed my gratitude. BUT I had felt that the massive onslaught he had brought to me would have earned a little more attention. He probably didn’t even remember who I was in spite of playing god over me for a few hours.

CENTENARY TRAIL

Step by step, one foot in front of the other, slowly, like in a marathon after you hit the wall, just make it to the next lamppost. With a friend who was trying to come back from deep long Covid we walked a small part of a section of the Centenary trail which is a 145 km hiking route around Canberra. A week later we linked up another part then set ourselves the long term goal to do the whole lot. Other things have got in the way but when we get a chance we will tackle more of the trail. It felt good to be stepping into, for us, a bigger adventure together. Planning each part and fitting in coffee shops, he’s a coffee aficionado, along the way put smiles on our faces and a sometimes spring in our step. I have always liked to have a long term goal to work towards, I just needed to make them attuned to my new level of physical capability and recovery.

PLANNING A COMEBACK

Springboarding from the Centenary Trail idea I spent many hours devising a structured plan to climb what I think are the best easy and middle grade climbs in south eastern Australia from Grade 8 to about 19 if I could manage it. I could slowly build up strength and would try to link up with as many people from my past and present as possible along the way. Thought I had enough when I counted up about 60 routes. I started back slowly into a weights and strength building program.

Part 3                 Into the light

TWELVE WEEKS            Dec 2022

This is a milestone. By this point my sternum would be fully healed. The surgeon said it would be safe to do everything again and the cardiologist agreed with the proviso of not going too hard. So I did everything! In the 12^th week. I ran, more of a slow jog really, but instead of singing in my head with my running playlist I sang out loud, popped in a few pirouetting dance moves and even busted out a couple of my signature flying runner actions.

Cath swam with me at the pool – slow and steady but covered a few hundred meters in the cool clear blue liquid bliss. Next day we cycled to the Lake for a coffee.

My mate and I hiked the harder Mt Ainslie section of the Trail.

And with heart in mouth I tackled some problems at the bouldering gym. Towards the end I pulled into a few overhangs to test out the wired up breastbone – it didn’t explode apart, and there was no pain or awkwardness.

Rest, protein, fruit and vegetables were going to be the easy part. The discipline of slow and steady was always going to be my biggest challenge. The dilemma of how much is too much and what sort of exercise was ok concerned me deeply. I wanted to live long but also do as much as I could without clogging myself up. Reservations about the advice from the cardiologist and my own research and intuition niggled and ate away at my confidence and world view.

FAMILY

Matt came home from NYC for the first time since the beginning of Covid. He seemed very much at ease with the world and himself, full of life, empathetic and caring. I just sort of melted around him.

Elspeth and Julian had a love party in the Grampians which was just a delight, friends and families all out bush, swimming, camping, sharing, dancing in the moonlight and witnessing their setting off into a loving future together. I speeched from my heart how thrilled I was to be there, to still be there (while gesturing to my chest). Emotion and tears flowed but it felt fine and something very deep connected our short lives together for me in those moments.

ON ROCK

First time back on rock, invited by Cait and Greg. At the Goldmines near Nowra. Sport climbing. I led two climbs then really struggled on two harder ones. Did better than expected – the little bits of strength work I had managed must have done some good.  I loved the moves, loved climbing, loved Caitlin and Greg, loved the world. Life was good. Endurance was down later in the day but I maintained energy.

Tired the next day. The reality of where I was (and wasn’t) and the long journey back kicked in.

CARDIOLOGIST – ONE TAKES AWAY   Jan 2023

Cholesterol was tenaciously high – another medication on top of the statin.

Strict recommendations on exercise – max up to 85% of Max HR = 132. Can run 10 mins up to that, walk and get it down to below 100, then repeat up to 5 lots. Up to 4 – 5 times per week. Translating this to adventure ruled out mountaineering for sure and probably backpack carrying up hills for any length of time. This was pretty much as expected as he attributed my exercise as a likely cause – like I had brought this on myself. Rockclimbing would need more investigation and monitoring. He’d see me again in a year.

The light faded and darkness closed in.

Yes the last thing I want to do is clog up again.

For my own psychology and state of being going forward I needed a second opinion on this – to examine the technicalities of heart rates, attribute causes and most importantly sort out what I could and shouldn’t do into the future.

The additional cholesterol reduction drug was an indicator that my body is specially resistant to a reduction.

I tried “running” at his suggested level and it was so constrained it was dispiriting and depressing – just the opposite of what I usually get from running.

CANYONING    27-29 Jan 2023

I took the nephews abseiling and canyoning as a strategy to rekindle and build relationships between them and meet their desire to do adventurous things. Between times of bad weather we fluked a rare good day into Grand Canyon where the conditions and the shafting light turned the already spectacular landscape into a majestic drama. Laughter, smiles, and  chatterboxing accompanied the swimming, scrambling, awestrucknesses of our journey into the depths and cold on a hot summer day. I felt privileged to be able to facilitate and share the experience with them – for each of us we entered into a deeply happy place away from our “other” worlds above in comradeship. And I glimpsed the edges of a subtle shift in my own possibilities to focus more on the sharing with friends and family at a lower level of adventure rather than pursue my own more self focussed harder goals and dreams. I well know the richness in this from half a lifetime dedicated to outdoor education – and the need is strong. But the lucky circumstances that delivered me to peak fitness and strength with an overflowing love of the mountains would be achingly difficult to turn away from with a broken heart.

I hadn’t used the old and beaten up red Olympus “TG Tough” camera for over a year – after finishing Ozy we had descended back down into the Gorge and miraculously located the camera in the scrub at the base, undamaged. I tucked it down the top of my wetsuit to keep it handy and in a vain hope to try to minimise water ingress. As we proceeded along the creek bed several times I noticed the battery charging sealed door had sprung open. Condensation and water droplets were all over it. Amazingly the images I’d snapped in a flurry of exuberant activity while the sunlight had ray-blazed into the canyon darkness portrayed a scene where we seemed to walk, dwarfed and humble yet exultant, somewhere in the zone where the natural, psychic and metaphysical realms occasionally connect in beautiful synergy.

MELBOURNE – AND THE OTHER GIVES BACK               1 Feb 2023

Trust is massive in the medical world. Someone you’ve only met for 15 minutes stops and restarts your heart, carves you up and puts you back together like Frankenstein, like a hundred others just like you in the last few months. You submit to their skills, knowledge and experience. I had had reservations about my cardiologist in Canberra. Though skilled and experienced he seemed to me to have an extreme view of exercise, assuming that my exercise had been critical in clogging me up. He had then prescribed a very limited, for me, exercise regime and limits following recovery from the surgery. Intuitively I found his ideas didn’t sit right with my own research and very limited but targeted knowledge. Within 5 minutes of my first consultation he had told Cath and I that when he walks round the local lake and sees a young person out running at a decent pace he sees them as a probable future patient. It would have been easy to follow his guidelines, and maybe I would eventually embrace them, and live limited. BUT my love of the mountains and running and adventure encouraged me to seek a second opinion. I sought out the best sports cardiology unit I could find – St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.

Armed with all my reports and test results, with great trepidation, having waited 5 months I fronted up. Dr Maria Brosnan seemed amazingly well credentialed having published more than 20 research papers and meta analyses on exercise and cardiology. In the full 45 minute in depth consultation she looked me straight in the eye and told me that my clogging had been due to genetic family history and how my body deals with cholesterol, that it had nothing to do with the level of exercise I had been doing and that perhaps if I had been her patient initially she may not have suggested the surgery route (depending on other test results). I cried. In passing she said I had likely been led up the garden path. And that I should have a stress echocardiogram if they could hustle me in while I was in Melbourne (and did I know why I had not had one done prior to surgery? No). Also, again giving it to me straight, if the echoC came back good, which she predicted, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXERCISE JUST AS I HAD BEFORE SAFELY AND LIVE A HEALTHY LIFE. She had just given me my life back. I floated outside and rang Matt from the park down the road tumbling about with words of relief – from across the planet in New York he held my hand as I danced down the street.

Three people, Maria, the ultrasound and tech nurse and the testing supervisor, all came in an hour early to enable my testing. I let it rip on the running treadmill like I hadn’t done for 8 months, relishing the freedom of full blown exercise in the safe confines of one of Australia’s best cardiac clinics with the most qualified and skilled people. All the results were terrific. WOW. Jubilation.

All for free. All bulk billed. What a marvel of a country we live in. Lucky us who win the birthright lottery to be born in Australia.

CANYONING 2               3-5 Feb 2023

Two weeks of intensive action between the Blue Mountains, Canberra and Melbourne raced along while Cath was away. Serendipity Canyon near Mt Wilson. Nephews H, J and I were like a canyon team by then. We hiked down, abseiled in water falls, into deep pools between the high, smooth sandstone walls. 5 times we abseiled, swam, hiked, marveled at the scenes, checked each others safety. Laughed, chatted about music, reminisced about old times on camping trips. And the lads showed they knew what they were doing mostly. And at the end we lunched on a big rock above the Wollangambee River with large lizards. Nature and people and good times spent in precious company.

ON THE RIVER               7 – 8 Feb 2023

My brother had mentioned that whitewater kayaking was something that he had always wanted to do and had signed up for a course at the stadium at Penrith. As a prelim for this I suggested he spend a couple of days in Canberra on the Murrumbidgee. The first day we did some skills training at Pine Island – the water was warm. In the afternoon we toured the short trip from Point Hut to Pine Island which took a few hours of running rapids, reading the river and dealing with bail outs – we both swam and in the end successfully ran the bigger grade 2 final adrenaline pumping rapid below the car park. Brilliant fun.

Second day we paddled the longer section from Casuarina Sands to Uriarra Crossing. This took most of the day – long pools separated by interested rapids and rocky races. Over thermos coffee as the beautiful river flowed by we chattered about a couple of deep family issues. It’s easier to just let things slide but I gulped and dove in. The sharing felt good. Yep life is short. Again we finished on the most engaging long rapid. Success (no swims). It had been a rare time for us to spend together.

ZEN AND THE ART DREAMS    10 Feb 2023

For the last 8 years I have been part of a group of six friends who are super keen on motorcycle touring, especially on dirt roads – adventure motorcycling – where you carry all your camping gear, food, water, tools etc on the bike. We’d done several desert and other trips together. In my early twenties I read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and was captivated by the whole concept as well as the psychology of independence and quality. In a lifetime of motorcycling I had always dreamed of riding and looking after one of the same type of bikes from the book – one with a low center of gravity, boxer motor and smooth shaft drive. Lots of part time work following “retirement” had generated a little bit of pocket money so I started searching. As a crescendo finish to the two weeks while Cath was away I found one and was lucky enough to be able to secure it by a lucky chance. Only trouble was it was bigger and heavier than I was used to.

This was a lifetime bucket list thing. I would try to make it work. Having cancelled out of so many BIG things because of the heart I accepted the invite onto my mates’ trip to Tassie.

CATH RETURNS FROM AFRICA              13 Feb 2023

Her two weeks of work away in Sudan and Malawi seemed much longer for both of us. Much had been packed in. She had been to some of the harshest places for refugees to survive in Sudan but discovered depths of dignity and in Malawi some projects that were leading the world in ethical education and advocacy. Our global timings had been marginal so we had much to share and home was the best place for a while.

JERVIS BAY       Late Feb 2023

Teeming rain as we set up camp for the week. Like getting washed clean was a prerequisite for tuning in to the ebb and flow of the natural world in this special place.

Ocean swimming – patterns of sunlight through the water’s surface rippling in the breeze onto the white sand sea floor and we stroked in the liquid otherworld between. Arms with smooth rhythm, breathing easy, along the beach, movement, grace, freedom, wellness, back home in the sea.

Walked barefoot along the beach after nightfall, the Milky Way arced right across the sky, hand in hand, warm heart. Soft wash on the shore.

Sea kayaked Illuka to Murray’s Beach. Underwater sea grass, sand patches, rocky reefs, kelp beds. A different perspective on the land and sea scape from on the water. I ride the edge of small swells close to shore. Cath smiling, confident and fluid, two weeks of stress ebbing away. Murray’s Beach stunning as ever. I wonder again, as I have many times here, about my Dad’s naval supply role in not moving the navy base from Sydney to Jervis Bay in the seventies. I felt close to him here, paddling on the ocean, to his sailing and time on the sea. In a different generation I get to continue my love of activities like this whereas he gave up his sailing as a young man as he could not fit it in amongst work and raising a family. And then he died at the beginning of his retirement.

Groupers green and blue, morwong, whiting, bullseyes under a ledge. Snorkelled in the warm water. Shared discoveries. We cruised around the rocky point. A school of hyperactive small silvers vibrated and danced around us reflecting flashes of sunlight. Further on I became entranced by a small school of the tiniest fish that pirouetted and snaked and balled as if in a joy of active togetherness. We covered some distance then headed back. Right at the point where the water deepens into a darker blue another school hovered and swayed around me as light streamed – I was with them, conscious of being fully alive in this moment – life is good.

Another evening walk to the beach. Billowing clouds pink, glowing in the after sunset. Sliver of moon, evening star above the western horizon.

Kayak on the bay, on a swell rolling through. Cath – “The ocean feels like it’s breathing”.

I swam long at Cave Beach while Cath bodyboarded. Nice waves, crystal clear water.

Very much full of life – I felt these things with more intensity, more attention. It had been a really special week. I wanted to hold on to this new way of being. Dad seemed to have a very dramatic change of being after his first heart attack – he became much warmer, eye twinkling, happier, more at ease, the big teddy bear inside him let loose more often. I don’t claim all of that but I know I have changed and there is much I would like to keep fresh.

TASSIE                Mar 2023

I took on the challenge of riding the big, heavy, fully loaded machine. The trip would be a make or break for the bike. A couple of hours in we stopped for fuel at Holbrook. The riding had been brilliant and the nerve wracking part had been the stopping and manoeuvring at low speed. “Do you guys realise we are on a two week ride through Tassie? Do you know how special it is to do something like this with a group of best mates? Do you realise how good it is to be alive?” I said this while pulling open my jacket, pulling down my tshirt and pointing to my scarred chest.

I dropped the bike while going very slowly down and round a very tight corner loading onto the ship. In front of hundreds of other travellers, bikers and drivers. EMBARRASSING. My mates jumped in and helped lift it up. And then again at a campsite at about 2 kmph. Apart from that the riding and touring and camaraderie was fab. Twisties thru the east coast hills. Looking out for the aurora borealis which was visible on the southern coast but eluded us behind clouds and rain https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2023/apr/25/aurora-australis-borealis-northern-southern-lights-auroras-across-the-world-after-solar-storm-pictures- . Driving rain on gravel roads up the Wild West coast. Forest walks. Great campsites. And then over two days riding alone from Melbourne back to Canberra I finally felt comfortable and in tune with the bike. Even some odd moments of zen.

Some weeks later I successfully disassembled and reassembled the whole shaft drive unit to fix a minor issue. Sometimes dreams, like zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, take half a lifetime (or more) to bring to fruition (43 years).

KILIMANJARO

Txt msg on facebook messenger – from a former student who was in a year 6 class in Tanga, Tanzania while I was teaching there as an Australian Volunteer Abroad in 1982/83.

(Inna – name changed). “Hey Mr Blunt! As I was planning a Kili climb with the family I suddenly remembered we had an excursion with you there!! Did we make it to the first hut or is that my memory?! We are taking our two adult boys on a Tanzania trip and super excited to be going back! Hope you are both well!”

My response; “Oh lucky you and your family. Yes indeed we did trek up to the first hut. That would have been in 1983 and I’m thinking that it would have been in the first part of the year. So that makes it exactly 40 years ago. Amazing. I hope you have a wonderful trip. Perhaps you could share a photo for the class. Lovely to hear from you.”

(Inna). “Your memory is better than mine!!! 40 years to the year that’s crazy, I had no idea!! Will def take a photo.”

Note – this had been my first BIG excursion for students. 15 of them aged 11 – 13 and some parents. Overnight train from Tanga to Moshi then a two day trek onto the mountain and return. 5 days. It all showed me that with a wonderful bunch of motivated young people the sky is the limit. The whole rest of my career became a quest to recreate this for as many young people as possible.

And a summit photo of them turned up 6 weeks later.

Part 4   In flight on rock

WARRUMBUNGLES – Flight of the Phoenix  300m Bluff Mtn   April 2023

Most rock climbers spend many many many hours reading guidebooks, talking to other climbers and dreaming about famous venues and climbs that they’d like to visit/attempt. Over many years some climbs take on a personal, psychoemotive, almost mythical place in our hearts. For me “Flight of the Phoenix“ was one of those very special routes that had been in the handful of climbs that I had most cherished for more than 40 years. Although I had climbed another route on Bluff Mountain and done several trips to the Bungles over the years this one had eluded me. With each passing year it seemed to get a little more out of reach and now with my cardiac situation even more so. When Cait mentioned she wanted to try to be part of the first female team to do the Bungles Triple Treat (Lieben on Crater Bluff, Caucusus Corner on Belougerys Spire and Flight of the Phoenix on Bluff Mountain in a single push) and wanted to do a recce I jumped in and offered to accompany her on the familiarisation trip as a person with local knowledge. Waking dreams of leading pitch 4, one of the most widely recognised pitches of climbing in Australia, with its rising traverse below the beautiful orange wing of the phoenix into space high on the wall, set my broken heart a-flutter. And with Greg on the team our El Cap crew was back together again.

To view a stunning photo of this part of the climb go to Simon Carter’s website  onsight.com.au    https://www.onsight.com.au/product/flight-of-the-phoenix-v/ and try to spot the climbers.

Hiking up the hill with a heavy backpack was always going to be a tester. I was quite daunted and not a little worried about how I might handle the physicality. Backpacking with a load was the basis of many of my most loved adventure activities – bushwalking, back country skiing, climbing in remote areas and especially mountaineering. Surprisingly the 6km and 300m ascent with 20kg, which a year earlier would have been just a warm up, went well. Glancing at the heart rate data on my watch reassured me that I wasn’t pushing too hard. PHEW. Such a relief.

Day 1   Up at 5.00am, out the door by 6.00 and at the base of “Lieben”, grade 17, 6 pitches, 200m. We each led 2 pitches – mine were straightforward, Greg’s involved some scarey slab climbing and tricky route finding. Cait led the crux up high which she did with style and confidence and which I found strenuous, exclaiming loudly and forcefully like a tennis player when I was on the brink of falling but managed to pull through. I was climbing reasonably well, considering … With a long descent finishing back at the base just on dark we made it back to the hut by about 6.00pm. A long day but all had gone smoothly. We were a terrific team.

Cait “How about a rest day tomorrow?” Reassured again. Both the young hotshots were fatigued as well. Our best chance of ongoing success lay in taking a rest day.

Day 2   Sleep in, leisurely breakfast. We hiked up and around to the base of Belougery’s Spire and checked the access to “Caucusus Corner”. Back for a quick lunch. Hiked out and found rough tracks through the scrubby bush to the base of Bluff Mountain. We compared the info details and a photo with the cliff base and located the start of the climb. Then retraced our steps back to the hut late into the afternoon. This would all make our trek to the start the following morning really efficient – we would be saved from thrashing round in the bush in the dark trying to find our way across.

Evening             Conversation 1. A soliloquy really. On top of the small peak above the hut as the sun went down. Rocky spires and peaks all around. Forested valleys and high ridges catching the orange then pinking afterglow. On video I reflected on the deep meaning of the climb next day. Emotion bubbled up, not unexpectedly. A possible life moment if we pulled it off together and a precious moment of life 7 months after lying in darkness on the table, switched off. Humbled. Savoured the fading of the day. So grateful.

Day 3                  Up at 4.45am, departed the hut at 5.30. In the darkness we hiked up towards Bluff Mountain, one of Australia’s big cliffs, 330m high.         

Conversation 2. Headtorches lit up our footsteps. Sometimes we walk with our friends with insights into their lives from which we build stories and occasionally add snippets to fill in gaps. Rarely we get to plumb the depths and realise that we are walking in the footsteps of heroes. Stripped of distractions by the darkness and focussed by the narrow beams of light Greg questioned Cait about her coaching of Canberra’s climbing youth. It emerged that she had started coaching in the local climbing gym (Mitchell IRC) at age 17. By 18 she had a group ready to compete on the international circuit and took a team single-handedly to Scotland, Oceania, later to China and across the world for world cups and other international competitions over the next 20 years. With amazing enthusiasm, a bold vision and new and innovative coaching techniques derived from her own athletic youth and deep research her understudies became equal to the elite of the world. Her Canberra crew broke into new dimensions of capability, performance and achievement in. She facilitated a group culture where, unlike many other individual athletes that compete just for themselves, they celebrated each other and thrilled at one another’s breakthroughs. This team feel has contributed to their longevity in climbing. Her groups that grew and changed became some of Australia’s leading young climbers, Ben, Daniel and Zac Fisher, Joe Horan, Angie Scarf Johnson, Esther Packard Hill, Emma Horan, and many others. All this she did while teaching full time. 20 of these athletes made Australian teams. Starting with 60 younguns the program now has more than 300. And through this massive contribution she has managed to significantly shift forward the state of sport climbing and competition climbing in this country. Dan has put up the hardest trad climb in Australia and several of the hardest sports climbs, Emma Horan is the only Australian setting world cup routes, Angie is one of the leading climbers in the world, Rose has just done an ascent of Attack Mode 32.

Predawn light filtered into the forest as we entered the scrub and twisted our way on the trails we had scoped out on our “rest day”. At the base at 7.30am and climbing. Greg led up a crack through a strenuous bulge then threaded the rest of the first crux pitch, grade 18, out left, then up, then back right through varied climbing. Eventually he found the belay next to an old piton hidden behind a bush. This climb had been established in 1974 when protection gear was of an “earlier” age. The sense of history was palpable. 49 years previously Keith Bell and Ray Lassman had pioneered the route – a groundbreaking achievement at the time. Cait cruised up the hard sections and then I followed at the limit of my strength – carrying a pack with water etc made it that little bit harder – at least I didn’t have to pull on any gear and didn’t fall off. The second crux pitch was a repeat. Cait found a route up, linking crack systems of strenuosity to reach a large ledge system. At this point we had succeeded on the hardest part of the climb – route finding and climbing to the ledge. At the right end of the ledge is a block with a fixed anchor from which Greg abseiled down a corner into yellow rock and made a semi-hanging belay. I rapped down the rope and joined him below the inner end of the wing.

In mythology the phoenix is a bird that keeps rising from the ashes, regenerating itself from the ashes of its predecessor in association with the sun. On Bluff Mountain the giant orange stone wing of the phoenix is the dominant feature of the whole enormous cliff. It sweeps across and upwards, above dark black rock, for 50 meters high above the ground. For a climber the terrain is daunting, a black wall of downsloping blocks below the impossibly steep and blank orange of the underwing. Greg used the abseil rope as a backup for his belay anchor system. Cait waited on the ledge above, with a “bird’s eye” view of the action, very safely anchored. The complexity and awkwardness and, according to hearsay, the dodgy nature of Greg’s anchor just added more drama to the situation. For some while I studied the rock trying to work out the somewhat unprotected start to the pitch. Then gulped and stepped out right and into the “zone”, the “flow’. Concentrate, focus, move slowly, look for protection, place a small wire, repeat. Until a few moves later I could get in a solid small cam, then another wire. Surprisingly holds for hands and feet kept appearing that were not visible until I moved onwards and upwards. The sun was warm. I was climbing well. Greg was encouraging. The climbing moves were continuous but not hard. I was miles up on the cliff. The rock was solid. I was here. I was fully alive. It all just kept on going. Greg became a small figure a long way down left. Totally hyped, psyched. But at ease with the whole world around me. I followed a line below the orange wing. On reaching the end of the wing a small ledge appeared where I fixed a solid anchor and arranged a semi-hanging belay. “Safe Greg!” I yelled down. He’d held my rope, my life in his hands if I had fallen, while I soared across the wall. Whoops from Cait and Greg.

We still had a long way to go. Cait abseiled down to Greg’s belay then he headed upwards and across the rising traverse. As he climbed I took in the rope and draped it big wall style in loops below. Hi 5 as he reached the anchor and a big smile.

Conversation 3              I perched the tiny camera on a small jutting rock that would show Greg in the foreground and Cait climbing the pitch below. While belaying I asked Greg how he had found the climbing compared to his favourite upside down roof sport climbing at Nowra where he had been ticking off most of the hard roofs for some years now. He told me about his reading of Dave McLeod’s coaching and improvement strategies. One of these had been to lose the fear of falling – I had witnessed Greg’s success in this to a terrifying extent. Another was to not just stick to what you like and are good at but to try and stretch out into unfamiliar styles and techniques – this had been part of his reasoning for joining this trip – intricate tricky route finding, rock that is not 100% solid – real, remote, “out there” adventure climbing. Also for him our previous climb up The Nose of El Cap, big wall climbing, had shown him how deep he could go in pushing himself which lifted his sport climbing through a threshold and up 2 – 3 grades. We all have ups and downs. I asked him how he was going at the moment and how climbing fitted into that. He revealed that things had been difficult ….. but that climbing really helped – the focus where all your thoughts are directed at just one totally absorbing thing, concentrating on doing one move at a time step by step moving upwards, the companionship and close bonds formed by the shared rope and experience, being with really good friends, having an objective (for Greg his objective would be a project climb that might takes lots of shots and months to complete) to work towards, sharing climbing with his children ….. Listening to him speak from his heart I could just feel how much climbing was helping him hold on.

Cait took her time coming up and across the wing, taking out the protection as she climbed. The downsloping stacked blocks that looked like a huge sweeping lizard skin was freakish to climb on while you came to terms with the idea that maybe they were all cemented and forced securely together. I was bopping around with Joi de Vivre, thrilled with what I had just done, where we were, literally living the dream, and confident we were headed to the top.

The day was still and hot. We drank steadily through our water supplies and snacked when we could. The hours ticked by.

Greg led off on the next pitch. The topo diagrams of the big climbs in the Bungles and the route descriptions for each pitch were often difficult to make sense of. I’d spent weeks putting together the best info I could find from multiple sources – guidebook, thecrag.com, blogs and talking to people who had done these routes. The complexity of the rock and the lack of major features to navigate by meant that there was still lots of guesswork in route finding decision making. Greg disappeared up and out of sight. According to the information we had it was important here from the end of the wing not to head too far up to the right as this would lead to steeper hostile terrain – the way through to the easier pitches higher up was up a steep corner system on the left. Greg appeared intermittently in view and seemed to be heading right then disappeared again. At times like this on a big adventure climb making mistakes can have dire consequences, like getting benighted (having to spend an unplanned cold night really uncomfortably semi-hanging perched on a sloping ledge) or in a very complex multiple abseil descent where you have to leave expensive gear behind. At times like this you have to have complete trust in your buddy up above that s/he is doing the absolute best they can and that they are making decisions based on their wealth of experience. He was taking a long time. Eventually “Safe.” Greg had committed us to his route finding. Cait went up with smooth grace. I followed up a long pitch which wound right then up a hard corner slightly left. We were in exactly the right place. “Greg you’re a legend”. Cait took us out left and into the exit groove. Then I led a scrambling easy pitch a long way towards the top and Cait scrambled the last laid back section to the summit rocks.

Embraced. Photos. Rolled the ropes. Changed out of tight climbing boots!!! An unexpected bitterly cold blasting wind swept the plateau and like a flag hoisted in a storm I could feel the negativity, doubts and struggles of the recent months being torn to ragged ribbons and blowing away like chaff in the tempest as the sun set. We raced through heath and boulders and found the descent track as the light faded. High spirits. I was flying, gliding, soaring, warm inside, rising from the ashes. My heart sang me back through the darkness to the hut.

I want to fly like an eagle

To the sea

Fly like an eagle

Let my spirit carry me

Fly like an eagle

Till I’m free

“Fly Like an Eagle” Steve Miller Band

I can hear the phoenix sing

Touch the rock and feel the sky

Let my soul and spirit fly

Into the golden light                               

Adapted from “Into the Mystic” Van Morrison

LINKS

“Pumphead” documentary film by Andrew Pike 2020  https://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/13773/pumphead.html

Ozymandias    

https://www.thecrag.com/en/climbing/australia/buffalo/the-gorge-north-side/route/142342560

Flight of the Phoenix https://www.thecrag.com/en/climbing/australia/warrumbungles/route/12107227

Common Climber (Facebook group) – Flight of the Phoenix

Heart support Australia            https://www.heartsupport.org.au/

St Vincent’s Heart Unit – Melbourne               https://www.stvheart.com/

Simon Carter website.   https://www.onsight.com.au/product/flight-of-the-phoenix-v/

Songs

“Viva la Vida”                Coldplay

“Into the Mystic”          Van Morrison

“Fly like and Eagle”      Steve Miller Band

”Born to Run”               Bruce Springsteen

“Beautiful Day”             U2

Climbing Beta

Ozymandias Direct intel/beta – for aid climbers

Pitch and gear suggestions Original below is from thecrag.com 2022. Our comments in bold.

1. 25m (M2) Slime Corner. Two bolts off the deck (Deck potential, often stick-clipped1st bolt at 4m – stick clip, climb up and across to good holds and stance, stick clip 2^nd bolt) to L-trending slab with slime-filled corner (might have to dig out some placements!) then up the crack. To DBB on a flake. Good stance. It’s possible to link 1 and 2. Nuts, offsets, cams to 3. After clipping 2^nd bolt haul up the rack.
2. 3530m (M4) Big Corner part 1. Sustained aiding on thin pin scars up the corner to a hanging belay 2 bolts with mailons and 2 carrots on the R wall. If you’re struggling, imagine freeing it! Camhooks, wires, offset nuts and cams to 2, micro cams
3. 4020m (M4) Big Corner part 2. Shorter pitch to free anchor out right on sloping stance – 2 good carrots. More pin scars up the same corner, using a mixture of thin and fixed gear. Overlaps and bulges. Camhooks, wires, offset nuts and cams to 2, micro cams
4. 28m (10M4) Big Corner part 3. Fixed piton then more thin gear and pin scars to 2 bolts. Swing or skyhook left to small tree and ledge. to trad belay in Climb corner on the left and tricky flop onto Big Grassy. Gear as above and cams to 3.

Big Grassy – lots of bolts, space for hammocks and portaledge. Ok position for one in between rocks on ledge. Extra space for 2 on flat ledge 8m below.

• 3530m (M3) More thin gear up the corner above Big Grassy. Carrot below small roof. Take the left corner line after the roof at 25m to hanging DBB for the “Ozymandias Variant M2″/”Ozymandias direct(free version) or the less popular right line which is part of the original Ozymandias Direct line.
• Option A 30m (M2) “Ozymandias Variant M2″/”Ozymandias direct(free version)” Up the beautiful corner (finger crack layback goes free at 22), at double carrots head right past two3 fixed hangers (2 long reaches – extender draw and skyhook maybe useful for shorter people) to a hanging triple bolt belay on the arete under the Great Big Roof.

Option B. 25m (M4) Ozymandias Direct – follow corner on RPs, wires, tie offs to hanging triple bolt belay. Unpopular and vegetated.

• 37m (M4) The Roof. New and old carrots lead to the roof (good nut and cam in roof) and then using small gear up the pretty orange corner, which gets thinner as you go up. Hanging belay. (the Gledhill Bivvy).
• 30m (M3) The Fang. Head R on decaying carrots then up steep crack past the Fang (some fixed gear) and beyond. Lots of steep awkward caving up to a final hand and fist crack. Take the big gear (cams – two #3s, #4,  #5) and watch out for the sharp edge at the start. Rope drag can be problematic.
• 4035m (10 M2) Continue up crack to an ugly carrot and a slab move leading right to the base of an easy chimney (optional DBB) make sure to move the haul line left of the trees before entering the chimney. Then head up to big terrace with plaque. DBB is way around left.
• 15m (M3) Steep offwidth (BD C4 #4 and #5s) with an initial seam on the left wall and a few dodgy carrots higher up. Finish on lookout.

Gear suggestions

• 12 draws, 4 alpine draws, 15 spare snaplink biners
• Slings med and long
• 3 – 4 anchor kits including 8 large locking biners
• Camhooks – 2 mall, 2 large, 2 skyhooks
• Haul kit – See “Nose of El Capitan” at 52adventuresblog.com for 2 to 1 setup with protraxion for group of 3 sized haul bag
• 8 bolt brackets, hero loops
• Camelots or equivalents – 2 each 0.5 – 3, 1 #3.5, 2 #4s, 1 #5 (Totems are brilliant)
• 1 set aliens
• 1 set alien offsets
• 1 set TCUs or DMM micro cams
• 1 blue totem, 1 BD #4
• 1 set RPs, 2 sets offset nuts, 2 sets nuts 1-7, 1 set 8-12

General

• Strategy – Day 1 – drive to Buffalo, sort gear, hike down southside track, cross creek and hike up to base of climb. Climb and fix pitches 1 and 2, sort out water from creek. Bivvy at base – comfy for 3. Day 2 – Ascend and haul to anchor 2, climb pitches 3 and 4 to Big grassy. Climb and fix pitches 5 and 6. Bivvy on Big Grassy. Day 3 – Ascend and haul to anchor 6, climb pitches 7 to 10. This worked well with our team of 3.
• Water – 3 ½ litres per day (December). Climb is shady from about 11.00am.
• Communication can be difficult round roofs and with noise from the stream, waterfall and wind. Consider radios.

Flight of the Phoenix

Balor Hut is an excellent base camp – can be booked through NPWS website, has a combination lock, mostly ? has water, bunks for 8 with wooden bases, only one group can be booked at any one time, some camping outside also needs to be booked, rats/mice will eat anything, 2 hours hike from Camp Pinchum carpark.

Start – 1 ½ hours from Balor hut via Dows Camp and a network of footpads from Dows Camp to the climb which would be hard to follow in the dark. There is a great photo looking up Pitch 1 from the start on thecrag.com. In a V groove with seat boulder on the ground.

Gear – doubles of cams up to #2 and a single #3, lots of wires, lots of slings, some micro cams are good.

P2          Good gear, a bit harder than P1, zig zag a little

Anchor on the ledge at end of P2 – has been replaced 4/2023 with double static inside inch tape with 2 mailons to abseil from.