The Art of Surviving

I have been silent for quite some time. Two weeks full of conferencing, teaching and a weekend of canyoning. This latter experience proved to be quite strenous and above all, nerve-wrecking.

It was a post-conference weekend in the blue mountains with some 10-15 people, organized by the Distinguished Professor Paul Griffiths, my host at the University of Sydney. Paul is not only a terrific philosopher of biology, but also an enthusiastic sportsman who likes bushwalking, climbing, canyoning/abseiling, surfing, and all the other outdoor stuff. Some weeks before, Paul suggested that I join him for canyoning. One of his first emails regarding the weekend read as follows:

"Elena and I want to do Devil’s Pinch canyon on Saturday. Jan and Brett have expressed an interest in joining us. I can take a couple more people, but this is not something to be taken lightly. It takes all day and begins with a steep, 400m ascent to the top of the cliffs followed by descending a deep, narrow slot in the cliffs using ropes and swimming through pools which are pretty cold even in summer, as they never see the sun. The longest abseil is 26m into a dark slot where you can’t see the bottom!"

This scared the hell out of me, but Paul was quick to calm me down. "You will be fine." When I asked his colleagues, and they started laughing. "ABC almost died on one of Paul's bushwalks. DEF bruised her ribs, GHI sprained his ankle, ...The helicopter had to come a couple of times."

They didn't make this up.

Still, I thought that it would not be very manly to chicken out at this point. So I got up on Saturday morning at 6:15 in my tent at Newnes in the Blue Mountains. A pleasant environment in a valley where they used to do extract shale oil before it got too expensive. This was in the 1910s and -20s, by the way.

We walked up the ridge and did the safety drill on a gorgeous lookout point with some rocks. If you have never done abseiling before, it feels quite strange to trust your life to a rope and a single metal carabiner. Also, my moves at the beginner's rock were far from convincing. My trip mates, however, were not only experienced canyoners, but also seasoned liars. "Great, Jan!" "Like a pro!" Well, you do need confidence for abseiling, if not much else.

We walked down on the ridge and worked our way through the scrubs into the canyon (entrance on the picture below). My nose spectacularly hit the ground when I leaned on a dead tree while moving downwards. Ouch. At this point I felt that I should perhaps just walk back and just realize that I was not made for extreme challenges. But then, we were at the top of the gorge and it was too late to turn back. On the wetsuit, the harness, and the helmet.

And then the first abseil of your life is 25 meters down into a dark waterhole that you can't even see.

(Not my picture, of course, but that's the spot.)

I did better than expected. The worst moment is when you are attached to the rope and you have to lean into it, to trust it. Once you are descending without doing something stupid, things work pretty much automatically and I could actually apply the techniques I had learned before. And the canyon itself was, of course, amazing---a deep gorge, 1-2 meters broad with 20-30 m high walls. Or even more. I did not make photos, but more than enough impressive images can be found here. I have copied one of them into the blog.

I also learned that the length of an abseil is not always a good predictor for its difficulty. The next one was shorter (15 meters), but everything was wet and I slipped while moving down the edge where the rope was anchored. I fell with my bums on the rock and was pretty uncoordinated. For a split second, I saw the horror in Paul's eyes. "Don't you ever let go of that rope!!!" Then, I slowly got on my feet and started descending again. I made it to the bottom, albeit in a somewhat clumsy way.

More dangerous than the abseiling were actually some rock scrambling passages in the canyon. If you blow it there, then you do not fall 20m into a deep constriction, but you will definitely break some bones and earn a helicopter ride. Thanks to the excellent advice and assistance from my teammates, this was not necessary. And I was not unhappy that time forbade us to do a third and fourth abseil. Down a slippery waterfall, with double belay and other stuff that sounded intimidating. At least to a novice like me.

It was quite a walk back along the river, but we were back in time for dinner. Self-made pizza from the wood oven. And on the next day, when we were driving back, we stopped at the Pierce's Pass lookout. I had survived the canyoning trip, and now it actually started to feel like holiday.