Shortnote: A Franco-Mexican approach to climbing...

KEYWORDS
Yay, Merde, Crap, Puta madre! Ouch, Climbing! Rock! Spider! Who the f... put those bolts so far apart? Yeepee

INTRODUCTION
Rock climbing in the wet NT is not the most famous outdoors sport in the area. Long rainy season, falling rocks, and plenty of mosquitoes are some characteristics of the bushes near the Darwin region that give no hint whatsoever of the existence of great spots for rock climbing. However, the authors have recently discovered a lovely outdoor-freaks crew who knows every climbable rock around. Thus, they joined the group on a day-trip to Spider Gully, in Hayes Creek, with the aims of: remember the feeling of real rock and heights, avoid the horrible activity of thesis writing, admit the fun of NT outdoors before the well-known 'dry season', discover the friendly side of NT police, and assess the safety of police cars. We realize the awkwardness of these aims, but they are expansively explained below.

MATERIAL & METHODS
Study site: Spider gully in Hayes Creek, NT, Australia.
Weather: in Hayes Creek, fine all along; in Darwin CBD, rain, rain and more rain...
Gear: Quick-draws, grigris, ropes, trad gear, helmets, usual clings and clongs, cookies.
Methods: Pros set up top-ropes. Beginners attempted to follow. For Indian cleansing ritual details please contact Ryan.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION
After a week of claustrophobic work in the CDU uni grounds, the authors joined a group of Darwinian climbers on the 16th of April. After gathering at the meeting point (Ironstone lagoon nursery) at 7:30AM, the troops got divided in 2 cars: Caillan, Barb, Ryan and Fin in Ryan's car; Mike, Xavier, Flo and Maia in Maia's car. After a healthy stop in Coolalinga (chocolate muffins, hot crossed buns, chocolate-honeycomb bites and other widely acknowledged sport's energy food), the two teams happily headed South.

The French touch materialised 10km further, in the shape of Sonny and Rico, two merry gentlemen from the NTPD, who decided that there was no rush to go climbing, and that the weather was nice enough just to stop and chat on the side of Stuart Highway. After they made the French driver aware of the current date, and therefore of the not-so-current date on her rego sticker, they had no other choice than to put hand to pen and pen to paper: a fine that started as 500$, but ended up at 220$, since the rego was only 2 weeks overdue. Never make the ecological choice of choosing to get your MVR renewal notice by email, or it might end up in the spam box, together with even more indecent communications.

Upon filling up the papers, the evidence of a problem struck everyone (the second car had turned back to help but more plausibly to laugh at us, not without reason): the car had somehow to be moved back to where it came from since no one could drive it. At that point, NTPD decided to provide a generous lift back to the sub-group of climbers (Fin, Mike, Flo, and the French driver), in the prison compartment of the truck driven by Sonny, while Rico was bringing Patsy (the French car) back to its stall, in spite of the fear running in the Mexican's veins, as over there (Mex), we would've never recovered the car if driven by a cop! The second car headed to Hayes Creek.

Who never dreamed of being caught behind the attractive wire-netted cage, and drove around like a circus monster for people to send mouldy tomatoes like in the good old time of the middle-age? The four lucky ones enjoyed very much their trip back home, got to know each other better and realise that those prisons are actually quite comfy. Upon arrival at the nursery, the French driver's naive intention of thanking the two cops by offering them a bottle of wine for their effort was - probably for the best - strongly advocated against by the three others as one... Finally, after parting from their new 'official' friends, they all jumped in Mike's car (which had a very stylish roof worth mentioning) and enjoyed the ride back South, cheering on the beat of Columbian cumbia and Mexican-quality music.

Upon arrival at the foot of Hayes' road house, the crew changed into tough clothes. Even Mike made it to his pants after some interesting attempts. Indeed the fear of the well-known "Hayes' rash" had been propagated to all, thanks to Fin and his itchy-groin stories, later concluded as a male-biased itchiness. However, further sampling is needed to confirm this possibility.

From casual outback ranger to the most appropriate hunting commando style, the crew was finally ready to bash through the mighty bush, cross rivers on tree trunks (well, just one), wade about in ankle-deep smelly mud, and duck down every now and then to avoid getting entangled in huge golden-orb webs and swallowing their fist-sized owners. After this jolly 5-10min hike, they arrived in the gorge: butterflies and cliffs, natural bathtubs along the creek, and, of course, spiders (otherwise it would be called "butterflies' gully" and it wouldn't sound so cool). The other half of the group, namely Barb, Ryan, Xavier and Caillan, were already top-roping Skunkhour (20), set earlier by Ryan. Fin wanted to set one of the easy climbs at the entrance of the gorge for the not-so-good climbers with Caillan leading, but were struck from horror at the scene before their eyes: the wall was dribbling wet... Might as well have up-streamed it in a kayak. So, another 'not-so-hard' one on the opposite wall was set by Caillan, belayed by Fin (Frangipanni, 19). A bit of a slippery start, but he managed to fight his temptation to use the big tree-root running from its middle to the top, and set the top rope. This was giving two options to the following climbers, either using the same right hand side ascension along the ledge (keeping the quick-draws) or removing the quick draws and climbing the facing wall, which was still quite wet. During that time, Maia had a go at the top-rope installed by the first group of climbers (Skunkhour), willingly ignoring the difficulty of the climb. First 5-6 moves ok, then stuck and tried, tried but couldn't reach that very attractive hold, 'just a bit higher' were they saying... But had fun. First time climbing on real rock since... 2006? the Saleve (French border, near Geneva)? Or was it that cliff in Les-Deux-Sevres (France)? In the meantime, at the lower route, Flo, carefully ('carefully???!!' says the Mexican) spotted by the over-enthusiastic spotter Mr. Fin, made it to the top, following Caillan's steps and removing the quick draws on her way. Last time outdoors climb was 6 yrs ago!! Holy crap! Some Inca temple? (no, actually Huichol, a bit further north). Mike was the first one to attempt the face climb of that route, which led him to go quite a bit to the right of the rope axis, and after some very brave moves, ended up in a very artistic and elegant upside-down pendulum 5-6 meters across the wall. Thankfully, a Mexican harness was decently fitting and allowed Mike to feel free to explore this new style of horizontal falling. Yeeeha. Ok, it was scary for the observers, and funny for him (or was it the opposite?). Barb was the next one to attempt this climb, and directly headed to the right, somehow managed to reach the side of the ledge and from there enjoyed the ride to the top. Woop, woop. But the rope was definitely rubbing like crazy up there, so decided not to spend the rest of the afternoon betting on when it would break.

Lunch time for some, basking-on-rocks for others, Caillan 'the photographer' immortalising others who ventured on Skunkhour (Xavier, Ryan again, Caillan, Fin...), and throwing salad leaves at Barb. At some stage, Fin decided to lead the route on the left-hand side (Barramundi dreaming, 21), and smoothly ascended, although swearing a lot about the gap between the bolts... We are close to the conclusion that it was probably one of those routes set up by the Inspector Gadget or maybe exclusive for tall people. After him, everyone could have a go at it, the second half of the climb being the trickiest with some holds being "quite reachy", and requiring regular meditation breaks at 15m height. A special mention for Xavier who managed to climb twice in a row Skunkhour!...we have forgotten the reason though.

Fin had the crazy idea of wanting to have a "clean" ascend, so he was leading the latter, while Xavier was top-roping Barramundi dreaming on his left. Nice show guys, almost synchronised climbing... The Mexican attempted the same climb, causing falling rocks on the way (blessing the helmets)... and retiring half way to the end... but hey, next time! By then, as some climbers just had normal Woolworths' AAA batteries, and hence switched to low-energy activities such as taking pictures, munching on mountain bread (or yummy avocados), or discussing spirituality, science and visualisation, the ones fuelling on Duracell kept on going. By 5:30PM though, everyone was pretty much done, and after witnessing Ryan's Indian cleansing ritual in one of the human-sized bathtub in the creek, packed up ropes, helmets, chocolates, and headed back to 'civilisation'. Luckily, Fin had indicated the place to cross the river with a very conspicuous brown and leafy stick on the ground, which just "any good bushman should recognise". Back to the cars, in a hurry to grab a group picture, for anyone who'd resume fast-moving for more than 5 sec was facing the risk of getting eaten alive by various affectionate dipterans (commonly known as "bloody mosquitoes"). A perfect, artificial frame was waiting, and there they hanged like dried fishies. Quick or it will fall! Click!

Nothing worth mentioning on the way back, apart of a suicidal BBB (bloody big bird) standing on the road, which saw its wishes fulfilled by Mike's car and scared the heck out of the napping crew. Time of death: 18:45PM. Crew went back to sleep afterwards. Amen.

This day's workshop was the start of productive future collaborations, as for example a healthy drink (eg. Beer/UDL) and some Russian funk dancing at the Happy Yess fast-music conference on the same evening...

CONCLUSIONS
The feeling of real rocks was very well remembered, particularly the day after when the authors had a hard time using the computer's mouse. However, the feeling of heights needs to be reassessed by actually finishing a long route!

The avoidance of thesis writing proved to be quite easy with these activities; we recommend rock climbing as an anti- stress, anger-management and other PhD-linked mental illnesses treatment for those going mad with PhbloodyDs. We also strongly recommend Russian dancing in case a day of rock climbing isn't enough.

Yep, rock climbing is doable & enjoyable during wet season (right, with no rain).

Surprisingly, NTPD can be quite understanding and nice. Even more surprisingly for the Mexican author, Patsy did not get stolen, nor any item inside it.

The back of the NT police cars was quite comfy, though some collaborators were concerned about its safety and decided to use helmets inside it and almost set ropes around us. We believe those collaborators have a tendency to claustrophobia.

Whatta great trip!

AKNOWLEDGMENTS
Warm thanks go to Sonny and Rico, from the NTPD. Thanks to Fintan Thomson for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and for the best-est road chock cookies. Thanks to Mike for driving us back while we napped; whatta fun crew to drive with, huh? Many thanks to all the field collaborators (Fin, Caillan, Xavier, Ryan, Mike & Barb) without whom the Franco-Mexican organisation would still exist but without the joy of outdoors climbing!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Motor vehicles regulation, Northern Territory of Australia, 2011. Ed: Department of Lands and Planning. Doi:
  - NT MOTOR VEHICLES REGULATION
• Top End Rock: An alternative climbing guide, 2006. Ed. Stuart Anderson. Doi:
  - http://www.climbingnt.net.au/#guide

- Latest Trip Report provided by Maia Berman (vive la France!) & Florencia Cerutti (viva Mexico cabrones!)

Your email address*

Your name

Message*

Check the box to Validate (this must be checked before sending)

Fields marked (*) must be filled in.