Sir Chris Bonington has just made his annual visit to Oz to visit some family here, so, as usual, looked us up and dragged me out for a climb. Just kidding; absolutely no dragging was required of course!
Incidentally, in case you’ve missed it, here’s my interview with Chris from two years ago.
Chris was giving a talk in Katoomba that evening so we only had a few hours to get out for a quick climb and our mutual friend Lincoln Hall joined us. Many of you will be familiar with Lincoln’s incredible story: collapsing high on Everest whilst descending from the summit, being given up for dead, spending the night in the open, then miraculously rescued the next day… His Dead Lucky story is a must read.
So I found myself in the company of a couple of entertaining “old fossils” (their words, not mine!), and these guys continue to inspire. Chris is now 74 and going strong and it’s great to see Lincoln climbing again sans fingertips after Everest.
We ducked down to Narrowneck and Chris wandered up 100’ Slab (grade 12):
and Lincoln easily followed:
Then Chris showed his experience by slyly sand-bagging me! He said he was keen for another route so we all rapped back down… He started leading but then backed off a sketchy grade 17 slab (17? Yeah right! Don’t believe everything you read in the guidebook!) so it was left up to me to lead us out of there. Gripping it was too! The fossils could have at least taken token slump on the rope to make me feel better about my slightly hesitant lead. But no, they both followed it clean!
A week later and Chris was back again and we headed out to The Fortress area of the Grose Valley with Mike Law and Jean Cane to climb the six pitch Tom Thumb (13). Ninety minutes hike and three full abseils gets you to the start. By climbing in two teams of two I was able to follow Mike and stop and take pics whenever desired (thanks Mike!).
Chris leading pitch two:
Also pitch two:
Jean leading pitch three:
And Chris pitch four:
The route is a classic of sorts and it was good to do although it was a stinking hot day of 35 o C. As we suffered hiking out in the midday heat we worked out that despite having 143 years of climbing experience between the four of us, on one of the hottest days ever up here, we’d still chosen a long route with a long approach. Go figure!
