Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Topic Date User

Monkey Fist -- a TR of sorts 24-Oct-2010 At 8:04:15 PM hargs

Message

PART THREE -- This time the monkey’s fist carves out a perfect trajectory, tracing a tall arc to the roof, slowing as it approaches the beam, and stopping at the upper limit of its track, miraculously, right on top of the beam. I’m surprised for a moment -- long enough to realise the monkey’s fist isn't falling down -- and then I’m surprised that I’m surprised: I’ve been telling myself for hours this could work. Now it has, I’m a bit excited. But I still have to get the rope down and flicking the dangling line just threatens to dislodge the ball from its tenous perch. The eave-cleaning end of my wobbly pole is hopeless, and the pool scoop end doesn’t have enough purchase. No, I need to grab a hold and haul it down.

On my desk, right where I keep the monkey’s fist, is a sand-cast bronze boat hook. It’s been a paper weight ever since the boat went. I dig through my rusting toolbox for a couple of mismatched self-tappers, screw the hook on where the cleaning brush went, lash everything back together, climb up on the railing and jag the money’s fist first go. Moments later, both ends of the rope are on the deck, I’m harnessed up, clipped in, and bridging my way upwards.

My daughter appears on the landing. “Dad,” she yells from inside, “you’re gonna pull the house down!”

“No I’m not,” I say automatically, a response which is based, well, on nothing. The post does bend when I push on it and, halfway up a very long spar, it’s bending in a frightening kind of way. It must look spectacular from the landing.

“Dad!” Sophie calls again before changing tactics. “Mum! Tell him to stop it.” I’m at eye level now and she fixes me with a hard stare, mouthing words slowly: “Stop. It. Now.”

Finally I get a hand on the beam and wriggle into a less uncomfortable position, shoulders on the bricks and tip-toes on the post. The next job is straightforward: tie a sling around the beam, unclip from the rope and clip into the new anchor -- not in that order, actually -- then pull the rope up, clip it to the sling, re-attach myself, and abseil down to dinner.

I’m testing a new method for getting myself from dangling and onto abseil: Clip one end of a long sling into a carabiner then wrap loops about 20cm long through a second carabiner, back through the first, and so on. The finished arrangement looks like a bulky quickdraw, except one end of the sling is free. Tie off the loose end with a mooring hitch. Top carabiner clips into the anchor, bottom carabiner clips onto my harness. It's all solid, so I unclip from the rope and hang directly off the beam.

The rattling in the kitchen has stopped, and I can hear Edwina messing about with the barbecue out the back.

The rope comes up easily. I clip a bight into the anchor, drop the rest to the deck, thread the rope through the Reverso and clip it into my belay loop. I’ll need to drop a good 30 to 40 centimetres to transfer my weight from the beam onto the Reverso, so I unhitch the loose end of the sling and start carefully feeding it through the carabiners. The loops extend in a more or less controlled fashion and I start lowering onto the rope until the sling jams and I’m stuck midway between anchor and abseil.

Edwina’s lighting the barbecue now. I can hear her fiddling with the auto-igniter but it’s a tricky operation: the lighter spark is set a bit far from the jet -- I’ve been meaning to fix it for a while -- so the gas doesn’t ignite straight away. You have to let it build up in the casing for a while, stand well back, and then push the igniter button with a stick. Click, click, click, but the barbecue doesn't fire up.

I try jumping up and down now to loosen the sling, but it doesn’t budge. I take my brake hand off the abseil rope so I can wrestle the sling with both arms. Click, click, click. The sling is jammed tight and Edwina is becoming increasingly frustrated with the barbecue. Click, click, click. I wrap two coils of rope around my foot, stand up and latch a hand over the beam. Hanging from that hand, I jiggle the carabiners with my other hand hoping to free up the sling. Nothing happens, so I jiggle harder and harder until suddenly the loose end jumps free, dangling uselessly from the top carabiner. Christ. Click, click, click... whoomph! An enormous fireball explodes out of the barbecue, followed immediately by a high-pitched squeal and then the faint waft of singed hair. I wrestle the sling onto my harness biner, then back up and through the biner on the beam, and ease some weight on. It feeds cleanly now and I lower away until I’m on the rope. It’s a quick slide to the deck; I slink into the kitchen, grab a couple of cold beers from the fridge, and head out the back to the smell of sausages hissing and spitting on the grill.

“Beer, honey?”