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Like father like daughter
Will & Martha
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Wards Hill, Phegans Bay, Terrigal
25 December 2014 |
Be wise: have wine and prune the bough
of long hopes to short minutes. Even now
as we speak here, devouring time speeds on.
Harvest this day and take no stock in dawn.
 For this Christmas day we took up a kind invitation from Jason to spend the day celebrating and adventuring at the Central Coast. The challenge was going to be how many activities we could cram into one day? The Rosenbaum’s took up the gauntlet and arrived shortly after 8am at Jason’s place and headed straight for Terrigal beach to start with a nice ‘warm up’ run along the beach and two steep laps up the skillion, to jump start our heart-rate for the day ahead. Louise joined us for a lap and meanwhile the twins Roman and Chris enjoyed the sucky shore break at Terrigal beach. Jason and Roman went for a quick swim and mercifully we only swam to the first buoy in the harbour and back. The next one would have been a lot further out and we needed to keep a little bit in the tank for the rest of the day.
By 10 am it was time for some breakfast and we all wolfed down some bacon and egg roles at the harbour side before heading back to Jason’s place to pick up the climbing gear. Next stop on the agenda: Wards Hill for some hard classics. By the time we got to Bouddi National Park, the midday sun was burning full blast and luckily the walking to the crag was short. The first warm-up wall featured the classic Black Panther (21**) but the grades were generally stiff. The next cave was a massive sandstone roof with honeycomb holds all over it. We discovered several new lines which are not yet in the guides. This was followed by the main area with several three star 23 and 25 grade climbs but while we put on our harnesses to really start the day we noticed that Louis’s shirt was suddenly completely covered in something black? We looked at our legs and all of us were suddenly covered in masses of sand-flies. Swatting them drew blood straight away and the sheer number saw us running for the exit. It was incredibly humid by now and the late afternoon thunderstorm was gathering strength. I was gutted to look at all those classics and not be able to have a go!
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Honeycomb routes |
Black Panther Wall |
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Wards Hill |
Breakfast Noodles |
 But we didn’t give up that easily: Phegans Bay was just a short drive so of we went to the next crag. Luckily the situation was much better with a slight breeze and a shady corner to repeat some of the classics. Quick warm ups on HS (17***my grade), were followed by the classic Phoenix (19*). The reachy start to the bucket hold gave the twins some trouble but everybody made it up to the easier ironstone section. Jason enticed Roman on the thinly bolted test piece on the far right hand side of the wall just before Opium (20) but the run out sloppy mid-section shut me down quickly. We still had time to blast up the thin moves of Sharon Stone (19*) before heading for a cool off in Jason’s pool.
 The was one more challenge left for us: to destroy as many of his mother-in-laws delicious honey-soya chicken-wings as possible and then get to work on the family sushi dinner. We all tried hard: sushi-maki roles, sashimi (including mahi-mahi) salmon sushi, inari, oysters but it was just too much. Jason was the last man standing and battled on for quite some time but even he gave up in the end and topped off the day watching his New Zealand climbing adventure.
Roman 26 December 2014
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