UNSW Bushwalking & Mountaineering Club

Newsletter - January 2003

Greetings all,

Hope this finds you all well and enjoying your holidays. As you have probably noticed it has been a little quiet lately, much has not been able to happen due to the fire situation. The good news is that some parks are now opening up once again including many of the canyons. However, with the recent weather nastiness and the disaster in Canberra and the South of the state, this may change, so it would be an idea to keep an eye on what is going on at www.npws.nsw.gov.au/news/firenews.html before heading out anywhere.

Stay tuned for O week and beginning of semester festivities. We will be making our presence felt during this time so come and say hello, and don’t forget to sign yourselves up for another year of fun and excitement.

Don’t forget, your contributions are most welcome, photos, trip reports and things that just need somewhere to be said can all be sent to me at mark.worsfold@bigpond.com We’ll see if we can liven this publication up a bit.

Trip Leader’s competition.

Don’t forget that this is still running, see the relevant page of this site for details. Due to the deathly quietness of the last couple of months, everyone is still in with a chance of winning some free gear. So get to it, and come up with something creative that can still be done in the current conditions. It may be worth noting that if you come up with a brilliant idea like going to Queensland to avoid closed national parks, it might be an idea to check that the park you are heading to in some far flung locale is not also closed before driving all the way up there. I realise this may sound obvious but it did not occur to some people, not that I am mentioning any names as those of us involved in that debacle know who we are. Hey, it was a fun trip anyway.

Here is what is now a reasonably old trip report from Andrew Moody. My sincere apologies for the lateness of its publication, and my even more sincere apologies if the area mentioned is now burnt out so you can’t go there even if you do like the sound of it.

Trip Report
12-13 October 2002
Kanangra-Boyd NP

Andrew Moody
Hudson Doyle

In the days leading up to the weekend, the weather had been cloudy and wet. I had prepared by reviving my Gore-Tex jacket. Although I had done it outside, my room still smells like vinegar. But it was all to no avail. The weather turned out to be perfect. On Friday evening I picked up Hudson from Coogee and pointed the car West. To get to Kanangra Walls, we had to negotiate our way through heavy fog, potholes, wombats and wallabies.

We arrived only to discover that we had one torch between us and that the pole on our tent was split in one section, but it was easily fixed with a little Elastoplast. After a long breakfast on Saturday morning (complemented by a strong espresso from my new camping plunger) we set off at 9am. From the Kanangra Walls lookout we could see all the way to Mount Cloudmaker, our destination for the day. We could also see every single hill between Cloudmaker and where we were standing. It looked a long way, with lots of ups and downs. The distance between the two points is about 11km by foot.

We made very good time, arriving at Mount Berry by 11am for a snack stop and Mount Stormbreaker by lunch. The climb up Mt High and Mighty was long and hard. Some bright spark once said 'what goes up must come down' but it was a bushwalker who came up with 'what goes down must come up'. In the hills just north of Kanangra, this could never be more true. Very little of the track was ever across flat ground.

After ascending the Rip, Rack, Roar and Rumble knolls and finally Cloudmaker without the packs, we were awarded with views over much of the Blue Mountain region. In the distance we could even see Mt Solitary and Narrow Neck. After signing the logbook, we returned to the packs, meeting some walkers on the way who had heard that Kanangra Creek, our destination for the evening, was nearly dry. By this stage we were desperately low on water. Between the two of us we had less than a litre of water. Instead of heading down to the creek, we decided to return to the car, where we had water. It had taken us five or so hours to get to Stormbreaker, and the time now was 3pm. We had to hightail it or we would get caught cliffside in the dark.

It was hard going, but it took all of three and a bit hours, with one stop between. To double back and cover every metre that we covered that morning was hard, but we made it back to Kanangra Walls by dark. It really made us appreciate every drop of water we had. I could only let myself have a sip of water after climbing that cliff, or the next. Every step was one closer to water...

On Sunday we awoke to fierce westerly winds ripping through the treetops. My sore feet could barely carry me down a short but steep slope to the waterfall, where we enjoyed our last view of the Kanangra region.

And now a rant from Karl. (I like rants, keep sending them in).

The 10 rules to being a Roadie Scum…
Some of the things I have learnt from watching roadies when I was a mountain biker and how my mindset has changed since lowering my morals, standards and care for society, all of which began when I bought a road bike.
If anyone out there is thinking of taking up road cycling, I thought I would write down the following so you can do it correct, right from the start.
Ten rules that must be followed to be a “Roadie Scum”:

1. When you pass other roadies traveling in the other direction, you may look them in the eye, but you DO NOT acknowledge them.
2. When you pass mountain bikers traveling in the other direction you do not look at them, wave, say hello or nod your head or take any physical action or make any sound that resembles acknowledging their presence.
3. When mountain bikers greet you, you may look at them but you may not reply. Think to yourself that he is an idiot for making you loose track of what your pedaling cadence should be and that he made you stop thinking about how good you look in your tight cycling knicks, colourful jersey and cut legs.
4. When you overtake roadies, think to yourself that you have a lighter bike, have a higher VO2 max and have stronger legs that are more aerodynamic than theirs.
5. When you overtake mountain bikers, there is no need to think anything as they are much further down the social class ladder and do not warrant your thought time. Overtaking them also made you divert from a straight-line path, which reduced your average speed. Provide a moments’ thought where you hope they get severe gravel rash on their next fall.
6. When you ride in a peloton (group of roadies), discuss such topics as:
   • where the closest and most publicly exposed café is (so you can sip a cappuccino/long white/short black and eat a croissant) and where you can also park your bike that maximises inconvenience to pedestrians
   • how great it is to ride around Centennial Park again and again and again
   • how you can pull away from that hairy feral mountain biker who is trying to draft your peloton on his dual suspension freeride bike (here you may need to talk louder as the noise from the mountain bike’s tyres on the road is disrupting your casual chit chat)
   • how much time pre-ride you spend looking in the mirror dressing yourself. Mention how your girlfriend takes less time to get ready for a formal dinner, including shopping for the dress. You will get nods of understanding from the other roadies in the peloton. Roadies in the group who are hiding the fact that they also mountain bike will not nod, they will look at you probably with thoughts that you are a total pretty boy and your mother probably also washes your cycling clothes. This is a good way to recognise riders who mountain bike as well (see Rule 9). So you don’t disrupt the peloton and cause a massive pile-up by not nodding, make sure you nod at these comments to hide your extra skills (see Rule 9). This is a little known fact, all peloton crashes are caused by roadies who do not mountain bike attacking other riders after they were identified as also being mountain bikers. This is the cause of peloton crashes in the Tour de France, Giro Italia and other professional road races.
   • how many km’s you rode this week and how you will be able to double it next week as your profits from your investment strategy should be sufficient to pay for a full carbon fibre bike, the first one in the country being yours, which you ordered when you were a 9 year old cycling prodigy
7. Your mother must wash your cycling clothes, but she must not touch your bike.
8. When riding up hills, as you stand up on the pedals look behind you in imitation of Lance Armstrong staring at Jan Ulrich before he made his breakaway. Say to yourself “Are you coming?”
9. If you are a rider who says they appreciate both disciplines of cycling, you obviously do not understand the philosophy of a true roadie scum. You must hide this ability that you can ride an off-road bicycle from other roadies. In the event that you have scars on your legs from mountain biking crashes and scratches on your face from tree branches on single track and other roadies notice this and question how you got these scratches, follow this procedure:
   • if you are riding with them: ignore them and ride away at the next street, do not talk to this roadie ever again, ride home and hug your mountain bike
   • if you are not riding with them: kill them immediately and dispose of their body in the local stormwater drain, steal their bike, hug your mountain bike
10. At every red traffic light, ride through it. When you get through it and have not t-boned a Ford Bronco, think that you must be a better rider than Lance Armstrong as he once t-boned a Ford Bronco.

Written by Karl Umlauff

Other than all that, keep an eye on the trips list and the mailing list and have a great rest of your holiday.
Till next time,
Mark.