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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

 Page 2 of 6. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 80 | 81 to 100 | 101 to 107
Author
What got you started?
kieranl
10-Jul-2003
12:13:03 AM
It was accidental. I wanted to go bushwalking after my end of term exams but the only trip on offer was a climbing trip to Arapiles. I really didn't mean it! You're stuck with me 30 years later, you poor bastards!
BA
10-Jul-2003
10:36:25 AM
I was at RMIT and was thinking of joining the Bush Walking Club when I saw a notice that said "Beginners Rock Climbing Trip" so I went on that instead. I had no idea what to expect, had never been 'inspired' by reading climbing books in the library and had never considered anything along those lines until I saw that notice. That was 35 years ago.

shiltz
10-Jul-2003
11:17:28 AM
I always loved climbing things...trees, boulders at the beach, hills, etc. I did a bit of bush walking as a kid and always enjoyed that as well. Trouble was that we lived in a little place called Donald. Its not that far geographically from the rockclimbing at Arapiles or the Grampians but its a long way phychologically. Nobody climbed in Donald that I know of. On the weekends you played footy, cricket or tennis and thats what I did too.
I don't think I ever really lost the childhood climbing itch, just didn't scratch it. I do remember seeing the odd bit of climbing on TV. On one segment I remember there was a bunch of guys soloing a juggy face above a river. It was a no holds barred race to the top. They were dynoing to grab guys legs and drag them off...but I digress.
During first year university I got caught up in the party and had a huge year of drinking and exploring what Melbourne had to offer. Then in second year I met a guy called Matt Harrowfield who was a climber (albeit just starting out). My first outdoor trip was to Mt. Stapylton, camping in the old quarry. We top-roped a bunch of easy stuff on Back Wall. I was wearing a pair of cheap canvas shoes from k-mart and a cheap-as-chips tape harness. The hardest climb we attempted was Tootsie. Not surprisingly I didn't get up it but I was hooked.
Not long after the Vic Ranges gym opened and we were indoors training. Trinity wall was our other training haunt and I did a few more trips that year to Werribee Gorge and the Grampians. It wasn't until my third year at uni that I joined the MUMC, lashed out on a pair of real climbing shoes and discovered Mt. Arapiles.

hardcore
10-Jul-2003
1:31:23 PM
I wanted to be a hard man. I thought that involved hard drinking and folk singing at the Wasdale Head Hotel in the Lake District of the UK. Only the following morning did I discover it also involved scaring yourself shitless on the end of a rope. I failed miserably at being a hard man but can now play a mean folk guitar.

Rupert
11-Jul-2003
9:29:16 AM
Its great to hear all the different stories from everyone - keep them coming!
(removed)
11-Jul-2003
11:38:00 AM
There's a common thread here. Virtually no-one tried to get into climbing and succeeded. For most of us, climbing found us completely by accident. It seems that few of us actually chose climbing, rather climbing chose us.

kezza
11-Jul-2003
12:53:14 PM
when i was about 6 i remember my cousins taking me climbing indoors in NSW.. right then i was hooked although never got into climbing until a couple of years ago.. a long gap but it was worth it...
Anyway a couple of years ago a subject at school i chose had the Duke of Ed. as a part of it... i had to do something like 20 hours of physical recreation... I chose rock climbing I'd been nagging mum to take me and the answer was always "maybe another day!" but because it was for school my mum couldn't really say no..
So i started climbing indoors at Cliffhanger it was a great vibe and i loved everyones enthusiasm and encouragement. I just happened to choose the busiest night of the week, so i was climbing among the regulars.
its only just recently i've started climbing outdoors thanks to Phil and Lou and i'm sure theres a whole lot more years of climbing to come!!

Rich
11-Jul-2003
2:19:27 PM
Hmm interesting Fatboy..except when u think back to the young days when we all climbed trees and loved it! I know I jumped up every tree i could find. I remember I once fell out of this chestnut tree in the backyard from about 5 m up and sprained my arm.. that of course didn't stop me and i was back at again and before long i fell out again from a bit higher up and broke my arm.. damn untrustworthy branches! still loved it tho. Has anyone had a go recently at climbing trees.. shit its easy especially when uv got those trees that have branches about the thickness of ur arm and they're solid, u can just fly up and trust each hold.. like speed tree climbing!
V
11-Jul-2003
4:00:23 PM
On 11/07/2003 FatBoy wrote:
>There's a common thread here. Virtually no-one tried to get into climbing
>and succeeded. For most of us, climbing found us completely by accident.
> It seems that few of us actually chose climbing, rather climbing chose
>us.

Reminds me of a conversation I had once with a more experienced rockclimber who I was climbing with at the time, soon after I started climbing. I commented that the reason I was into rock climbing was probably circumstantial and that if it hadn't been for certain coincidences it would never have happened. He replied that almost certainly in my case it was a natural progression and that I would have ended up involved in climbing somehow even if I hadn't stumbled across the uni club.

I saw on the back of a T-shirt once: "Few people have it -- even fewer know what to do with it" and that stuck in my mind. (Okay, it was a "No Fear" T-shirt, but it sounded plausible...)


Megan
11-Jul-2003
8:12:09 PM
I was another one of those people that climbed anything that was available as a kid - however growing up in plains country, this didn't involve rocks. I remember seeing people climbing off on distance rock faces when going bushwalking in places like the Grampians and the Warrumbungles with my parents (and picking up the idea that they were crazy people). But I never actually saw people climbing, or realised it was something people actually did, until I found an ad for the Mill in my Uni diary - I was fascinated by the idea of a climbing gym, and dragged various unwilling people to go there with me, until one of my friends in the Uni Mountaineering Club gave me membership as a birthday present and forced me to go climbing with them - my first outdoor trip was to Arapiles a couple of months later, and after being hauled up multi-pitches and climbing well into the dark (in the middle of Winter) I couldn't wait to go back.

Pei
14-Jul-2003
12:50:56 PM
When I was six, me and my family visited my brother on his summercamp. They were abseiling off a wooden tower and I wanted to try it, so they let me have a go. I guess that was the first time I did anything to do with ropes and stuff. Then over the years I went to the climbing gym a couple of times, mainly bday parties or school holiday daycare. Always had lots of fun at them. Anyway one day I saw a BD harness at Paddy Pallin on sale for $40, so I bought it and next day went to the climbing gym and got a 1 month membership with my brother and have been climbing ever since!

A.K. Dancer
14-Jul-2003
7:37:56 PM
it was the colourful tights that did it for me! i got sick of wearing daggy thermal poocatchers on bushwalks and saw that climbers got to wear lycra so i just had to make the switch. no really its true!!

IdratherbeclimbingM9
24-Jul-2003
4:43:48 PM
Surfing was my 1st love but caving exploration led to single rope techniques (abseiling, prusiking, belaying), associated with vertical systems.
Practised above ground for safety below, but thought climbers were mad.

Went overseas (holiday) and dabbled in climbing due to an invitation from an addict looking for a belay. Tahquiz Rock ... beautiful granite in southern California, ... ahh the memories! Travelled to Yosemite where I did not climb but was inspired (at a distance), by those who were heading up the walls.

Moved overseas (PNG) and realised that surfing was not an easily achieved option in the new location in combination with my work, but by then had enjoyed the climbing so decided to specialise and buy my own rack. The taste for exploring new places/things was again fed ...

Climbing has since surplanted caving and surfing, but mostly for practical reasons due to the locations I have lived.

The search goes on ...

johan
22-Oct-2007
1:56:29 PM
Hey Rupert,

Just did a google on lost world and your story came up. I remember the same book 'Climb to the lost world' and it was instrumental in me and few mates commencing climbing back in the early 80's. In fact, we did a trip over to Roraima back in 1996 just to see the famous prow of Roraima for ourselves! What a top place it was. More recently, a mate and myself put up a long abseil route in our blue mountains named 'Africa' after the Africa Flake which Joe Brown named in the book. That book still brings back fond memories.....

Tel
22-Oct-2007
4:24:12 PM
I said to a friend in passing " i wouldn't mind having a go at that indoor climbing"

MisterGribble
22-Oct-2007
4:42:57 PM
Watching the Six Million Dollar Man drive pitons into blank rock with his bare hands, clipping them and climbing past while the damsel in distress belayed.

It showed me what was possible if I took up climbing.
devlin66
22-Oct-2007
5:12:43 PM
David Lee Roth and the guys at work had started a couple of months before me. Steve Moon also worked with us which is what got them into climbing. Raced mountain bikes with Smoothey as well, but that was before I knew he was a rock climber.

muki
22-Oct-2007
5:42:35 PM
I started out a most of you did, as a kid I would climb anything that looked like a challenge, this led to a
more serious hoby of climbing any cliff faces I could find, living near the blue mountains as a kid I was
not spoilt for choice, I even developed 3 point contact as an intuitive method of being able to down climb
if it got scary (no holds) then when I was about ten, I made a big mistake and dynoed to a hold (breaking
the 3 point rule) this hold then slid out of the cliff like a draw! I thought that I was now dead! being 5
stories up, but luck provided a small tree for me at the base of the climb, so ended up living instead.
Many years later, discovered ropes and harnesses and thought that if I could fall climbing and not die....
the passion was reborn. BP

GravityHound
22-Oct-2007
9:18:55 PM
my old man climbed back in the 60's and always raved about it (but had to stop when he met mum). always hiked around the base of the blue mtns on the other side of the river growing up and there were some cliffs climbed around then, so i was always aware of it. then in the early 90's a friend of a my girlfriend introduced me to a nutter who also hiked. but he climbed as well. many many weekends were spent at piddo and mt york mainly. i stopped in 2002 when i moved out to orange and my mate went overseas then found a crag 20 minutes from home a few years ago and havebeen going gangbusters ever since again. should never have stopped.

Zebedee
22-Oct-2007
10:32:03 PM
On 24/07/2003 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
> caving exploration led to single rope techniques
>(abseiling, prusiking, belaying), associated with vertical systems.
>Practised above ground for safety below, but thought climbers were mad.
>
I also started underground in with a close friend who was way into it, some abseiling and prusacking, lots of squeezing. Joined a mountaineering club, they had climbing as well as kyaking, An outdoor wall was built vertical clay holds, readily Available and not as yucky as underground. Went to Arapiles, had a moderate talent for it decided bat shit was for losers and I stuck with climbing. Fat, Old and weak now but still boulder when the weather is nice.

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There are 107 messages in this topic.

 

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