Video - Tom O'Halloran climbing Bakers Dozen (35/9a)

Maybe in the past when you got a baker’s dozen you only got 13 but not anymore. Tom O’Halloran just upped the ante to 35 – yep 35. If you get any less than 35 with your baker’s dozen you’re being ripped off, mate.


The reformed Queenslander now calls the Blue Mountains home and being surrounded by vast amounts of stone has obviously been great for him. When he sent his new route Baker’s Dozen at the Bluey’s crag The Pit in June he became the first #Strayan to clip the chains on a 35 (9a).


Watch the sweet video we put together with Vertical Life. We tried our best to keep it short and entertaining.

Bakers Dozen 35 – Tom Oh from Adventure Types on Vimeo.

Video – Highlining in Tasmania

Two spare minutes will take you to the Tasmanian Central Highlands and show you what we were up to earlier this year. I believe this beautiful place is call Highlands because of the great highlining opportunities.

In January I teamed up with Alex and Stepan, two awesome people and highliners from the Gold Coast and the master of words, drones, unexpected camera angles plus our chief entertainer Simon Maden from the Vertical Life magazine.

The main objective of the trip was to visit Mt Geryon and see if a highline could be established between its wildly forked summits. Mt Geryon is an epic mountains which requires a multiple-day walk in before the actual scrambling and climbing to the summits starts. With such a small crew and the amount of equipment we needed to drag up we knew that the chances we would rig the line were pretty slim.

Sunset at Lake Elysia with Mt Geryon and The Acropolis in the background

But somehow after long and sweaty days of dragging our backpacks and bodies up, scoping the possibilities for natural anchors and finally rigging the line it turn out to be a success. Stepan sent the line which is now called The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and you can check out the result of our effort on this little video which was put together by Simon over many sleepless nights and lots of coffee, a good coffee of course - he is from Melbourne.

And if you wonder why the Book of Laughter of Laughter and Forgetting here is an excerpt from Simon's awesome post (do not forget to check it out).

---

The name plays on the mix of nationalities of the expedition’s protagonists but it also carries a deeper, murkier current. Climbing, highlining, skiing, meditating, cycling, running, leaping out of planes – all of these share some commonalities, one of which is amnesia.

Forgetting has been central to the flow of time. Now though, with vast outsourced digital databases hoarding pictures and posts of things that would be perhaps better left to fade, it seems as if it is more difficult to forget than it is to remember. A perfect memory is a panopticon’s curse that changes the way we behave and leads us to self-censor. Not forgetting has weight.

An overfull past cluttered with stubborn memories is also impenetrably opaque, the volume of things making it hard to focus on that which is important. Forgetting facilitates evolution and change. Forgiveness is wrapped up with forgetting. We need to let go and forget – somethings forever and others for only moments. A good forgetory then is as important as a good memory.

Our memories are not stable, they don’t stay fixed in consciousness. You can deliberately rid yourself of them. Scrape some of them away. Walking the line (climbing the route, dropping the chute) is amnesia.

Forgetting the long uncomfortable march, the burning calves and charred quads, chafed hips, the descent of foul weather, the rising frustration at poor decisions, the quotidian life that waits off the mountain, the past, plans, the self. Being enveloped wholly in the challenge and subject to the instant visceral feedback, these are what consumes consciousness. Walking the line becomes voluntary amnesia.

---

Photo of the Day

Mountains, sea, chess, ships in a bottle? It does not really matter does it? What’s your passion?

Photo of the Day

From the archive … Waiting for the sunrise at Indian Creek. If you ever said yes to a photographer (or perhaps a fellow climber) to wake up way before sunrise, leave the warmth of your sleeping back, walk in in the dark and all that just to maybe get a photo if the weather is good … then I salute YOU. Without you some of the best photos would not be possible and for me personally it is just one more proof of how much passion is out there in climbing. Thank you!

Photo of the Day

The always-looking-for-a-new-stuff crusher @dugmcc at the rather technical crux of Ice Age II at Pterodactyl cave in the Blue Mountains. If you want to know the 100% true story about discovering this unique arch check out the latest issue of Vertical Life magazine.

Photo of the Day

One of the beautiful and awesome aspects of traveling is that you never know what’s waiting for you around the corner. Vercha (aka @treeloveyoga) enjoying the early morning view of Mount Solitary. And for us climbers … Can you imagine how much climbing is waiting for us there?

Photo of the Day

Somewhere there … there was the famous Frenchmans Cap