Like father like daughter

Will & Martha

When in eternal lines to time thou growest
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

It had been some time since we caught up with Jason at the Central Coast so the long October weekend was the perfect excuse to catch up for some climbing at the coast. It was our first heat wave of the year and we met a Zanzibar as was customary for the caffeine and eggs benedict. The whole family: Roman J. Chris Louise and Leo joined Jason, Katie and another Jason with baby. It was a motley crew to be sure and the day was steaming up reaching thirty quite early in the morning. We needed a shady place for climbing not too far from the beach and Kingsview provided the perfect shady setting for a quick but hard core session. Warming up on Bike Boy (19**) was as usual desperate with everyone not sure how to do the crux move again. The grade could be anything from 18 to 22 depending on how you execute the balancy sequence of moves. A little bit of memory would be been a nice advance, well maybe next time.

Kingsview Umina Crag

User Friendly (20***)	Jason User Friendly	Gordon belaying	Louise on Bike Boy (19 ***)
Katie User Friendly	Katie User Friendly	Roman onBike Boy	Louise Chris and Roman J.
	Leo and Roman Deliverance (23**)	Jason Bike Boy	Louise Cruising

I totally forgot about the high quality of rock at this crag, add the varity of climbing styles, cracks, slabs, roofs and vertical spaces and we are talking about one of the best crags the coast has to offer. As usual we were the only ones there! Just around the corner from Bike Boy, was the customary warm up Big Black Spider (18**) and everyone was grateful to be doing a real warm up after the sand bagging of Bike Boy. Next was User friendly (20**) with its thin crux start slopers and folllowed by a nice rest. A cruxy arête with a little traverse sequence leads to a full undercling rest, a death by crimper finale leads to the single ringbolt lower off. If there weren't so many rests on this one it would be much harder. The heat was really setting in now and there was just enough time for one hard burst, so Deliverance (23) was our painful choice. The start crimpers were impossible and after shedding more skin then a lizard we just pulled up on the draw. (it might go with a big gaston high to the right iron stone door handle?) A big rest on a horizontal crack leads to a bouldery right to left traverse. About V5 on small crimpers but doable. Then a nice and easy finish on ironstone handlebars to the top. One ring lower off again. I would rate linking the two crimp problems at the start about 25 in modern grading, but an old school 23 is better for preserving a humble attitude.. Gordon noted astutely that grades used to be much more compressed when the scale was smaller and the top grade in Australia was 21.

Everybody was hanging for the beach now so one quick lap on Bike Boy to work out the crux (yes it is done from inside the cave - I knew it) and we were off to Hardie Bay for ice-coffee and hot muffins, YUM. A short drive to Killcare beach and we were praying for waves. Gordon had predicted that the swell would be perfect for Putty beach in Bouddi National Park and Terrigal and Avoca would be too crowded. He was right.....it was going off with 3-4 foot heavy sets rolling in all over the beach. We went to the a surf spot known to locals as the Triangle, right in the middle of the beach where faces were steep and full. The twins were carving and would make a stonemason blush, I was massaging the tendons in my shoulder to squeeze another few minutes of paddling out of them, groan. There was still one more site to visit and the late afternoon sun was still strong so we headed straight over to Gosford leagues club where we finally got the grand Jason tour: Altitude Room, fitness studios, Clip and Climb it was like a dream come true. What’s more, our simulation dry ice tools had arrived so Wye Creek here we come again. We finished off with an authentic Malaysian/Chinese/Aussie dinner at Jason's place (thanks again Ivy and mum) and downed a couple of beers in the process. What a day: nice and full we will be back for more.

Copyright 2005 Dr.Roman Rosenbaum. All Rights Reserved.