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Returning to climbing after 29 YEARS! 22-Dec-2014 At 1:01:21 AM deep Van Winkle

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Well done Kieran! Did it occur to you straight away or did you mull over it? I' ve been lurking here for a few weeks reading massive amounts of posts. As you can imagine there's quite a lot of catching up to do.
I was at St Peter's Indoor Gym when I saw your post. It was my first time climbing in 3 weeks since mildly injuring four A2 pulley ligaments. I had started to think that age might somehow conferred special resistance to finger injury, obviously not. Trying to not tempt fate I stopped at grade 18 today, not that I'm able to go that much above that currently. It's been fun going up a grade every time I go to the gym but obviously that can't continue for much longer.
What was the impetus for returning to climbing some of you may be wondering? I started shortly after attending the last day of the Australian Climbing Festival at Katoomba but that in itself wouldn't have
been sufficient. I had attended one of the Escalades at Mt Victoria about 10 yrs ago.
I've lived in the inner South-west Sydney of Earlwood for about 6 yrs and there's a tiny, blink and you'll miss it outcrop on the Wolli Ck bushland close by. Occasionally I've seen climbers and exchanged pleasantries, however in autumn this year the my family minus encountered a small party climbing there and befriended Jules Truong who had climbed for several years in her late teens and early twenties and is now making a comeback after about 10 years. We had her around for dinner, did a bit of bushwalking in the Blue Mtns but as an old fox I had an endless number of ways of wriggling out of attempts to get me climbing. Jules put me onto the Oz Climbing meet held in Oct which my wife Barb and I attended catching up with Louise Shepherd, seeing the bouldering finals and the great 'Is climbing sexy?' debate. At the end we introduced ourselves to Cedar Wright, Simon Mentz and joined a little while later by Simon Carter. Instead of giving us the bum's rush once our lack of celebrity status could be ascertained we finished up talking animatedly for about 15 minutes. The Festival was like plugging into 40,000 volts and brought back to me so many of the reasons I'd originally been drawn to it. Oh and I've recently purchased each of the Simon's finest guidebook offerings (Araps & Blue Mtns).
Jules Truong incidentally is a Chockstone member (usually posts in the Find Climbers section) and is a climber with a demon drive.
The family is planning a road to Adelaide just after Xmas via Buffalo, Melbs and Araps. I'm currently resuscitating my old rack and augmenting it with some shiny new things.

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