10 things I learnt from attempting Escension (mt warning).

• wait-a-while hurts when you get tangled in it
• leaches suck
• walking for 12 hours to get to a crag usually means YOU ARE LOST!
• Walking for 16 hours in a weekend severely cuts down on the amount of climbing you do.
• climbing is more fun than walking
• ant poo in the eye hurts!
• if a route hasn't been done in a year, it's probably overgrown
• junglebashing can kinda be fun (in a weird masochistic kind of a way)
• did I mention that climbing is more fun than walking?
• You can have an epic that doesn't actually involve any sort of rockclimbing

Needless to say, we got lost. Well, correction. We knew where we wanted to be, but not quite how to get there. Out of 9 pitches of climbing, we got a grand total of 0 m of clmbing. (we did scramble up about a third of the 1st pitch).

Oh well, we sorta had fun - we'll be out to do the route in a couple of weeks time

have fun

steff (maybe we should rename the pepsi max extreme team the navigationally challenged team!)

10 things I learnt from actually doing Escension

• Jungle bashing still hurts
• you can sleep 3 people on a ledge that's shorter and narrower than a single bed (you just have to be really really tired).
• The windshield off an MSR, an RP and a biner can be used to make a hanging stove out of an MSR
• Girls, buy a funnel... and learn how to use it.
• spear lillies make the most comfortable belays
• There are times when not even a helmet will save you (ask Simon, Ryan or I about this if you are curious)
• jelly dinosaurs can fly! (when they fall out of your shirt)
• A pig is a hell of a thing to haul
• portaledges act like kites when you try to abseil with them open
• The view after 9 pitches of climbing, and nearly 24 hours, is absolutely spectacular

Well, we did it. Am I glad we did it? Yeah. Would I do it again? Hell no. It hurt heaps, but we had fun.

steff