Rocklands, South Africa 2021

 

I haven't been keeping up on this blog.  Have any climbers kept up with their blogs?  People are primarily still on Instagram, despite it being an inferior platform with inferior content.  Quantity over quality, delivered with no effort at all, just spilling out at us, like soft serve ice cream.  Anyway, I'll be blogging regularly again (in addition to posting on Instagram) and there's a lot to catch up on!  Starting with my trip to Rocklands, South Africa in 2021.

At this point I'd been divorced for a year.  My non-romantic adventure buddy, Josephine, had invited me on a trip to the Seychelles.  There were some big rocks to explore on the Seychelles, but it was a long way to fly for granite that could be amazing, but might not be.  I decided to make sure I'd get some amazing bouldering by adding a stop in Rocklands to my travel plans.  Then Covid restrictions made the trip to Seychelles from South Africa impossible.  So my Rocklands trip was extended to three weeks.

I'd wanted to visit Rocklands ever since Chuck Fryberger's film Specimen came out in 2006.  I had summers off, but I also had a wife, two daughters, two dogs and a job caretaking for a Quaker meetinghouse on the weekends.  So I couldn't figure out how to make it happen.  Fast forward to the summer of 2021. I could easily leave for three weeks, by myself, for just the price of one plane ticket.  I hadn't wanted or expected to be single, but I was, so I decided to make the best of it.

I wasn't worried about Covid, because I was fully vaccinated.  The idea of flying half way around the planet did bother me.  I know that climate change is real, and I don't want to contribute to it.  But as I flew over New York City at night, with it's miles and miles of millions of lights, and with cars streaming along arterial highways like red blood cells, it hit me hard that I couldn't do anything to stop climate change.  Even if the plane I was on crashed so everyone on it stopped contributing to climate change, that wouldn't slow down climate change by any measurable amount.   Seven billion people would just keep emitting carbon.  New technology or cataclysmic events are the only things that could help the planet stay stable at this point.  My flight to South Africa no longer felt significant as I saw the scale of human endeavor spread out before me.   The mountains make us feel insignificant in comparison to the nature world, but cities can show us even more clearly how small we really are.

Then I arrived at the Newark Airport and had to spend the next 48 hours there.  One missed flight due to an earlier flight delay to Denver.  And then a cancelled flight from Newark because the airport kept us on the runway too long so the pilots timed out.  The lines were so long, sometimes there was no one at the service desk.  I found out that United Airlines gives rich people a special hotline so they don't need to deal with this bullshit.  It made me upset about the world.

The line at 2 AM after a cancelled flight in the Newark airport.

I had to spend a full night trying to sleep in an airport intentionally designed to keep anyone from lying down.

I was so worked.  I recommend avoiding the Newark Airport.

After 3 days of travel I landed in Cape Town and the world was bright again.  I rented a car, got to my place in a de Pakhuys guest house, and accidentally slept in until the late afternoon.

I expected a wild Rocklands landscape like the opening shot of this post.  What I woke up to was a bouldering resort.

I set my cheap rental pad under the first good boulder I saw.  It's called Poison Dwarf.  You can rent cheap pads, or if you get to know people you can grab pads from your country's storage area.  Ask around.

The sun set quickly, but luckily other climbers brought lights.

The quartzite at Rocklands is so climbable!  This one medium sized block has eleven steep problems on it.  And the stone is so solid.  Everything I tried was high quality fun!

I went back to my guest house and posted to Instagram.  

A few minutes later I got a message from Graham "You here?!?!? Lezzzz rage!"

I couldn't believe my luck.  Not only was Graham at Rocklands, he had a full crew from Bishop along with him.  I went from traveling alone to being part of the crew!  Their psych and beta helped me climb some really fun lines!  And I supported the crew whenever I could.  Graham, Annie, Clarky, Ilah, Ian, and Lisa, the entire crew was great, and I was so psyched to get to know everyone.

Lisa climbing a line out an arch called "Sex Etiquette" 6C

A shot of me climbing the same line.

We had rainy rest days when I didn't get photos.  The flowers and waterfalls were beautiful when the sun came back out.

We all hung out a lot!  At South African barbecues called "braais" and in the sauna Nalle and Scott Noy built by the river.  Graham attempted to get good shots for my dating profile when I wore my shoes designed by Jason Mamoa.

We visited a lot of different zones and I got some photos I like. Here's Ilah climbing "The Roof is On Fire" 

Sometimes bouldering is like site seeing, Ulan Bator 7b+ is one of the most beautiful lines ever!

Another highlight of the trip was climbing with Nalle.  Nalle put up the hardest boulder problem in the world, the world's first V17, in 2016.  He's a legend, and he was developing entire sectors at Rocklands during the 2021 season.  

Nalle sending an interesting 7c.

I watched him put up this line.  He rapped and cleaned this line in ten minutes and climbed it in the next ten.  It's probably 7c+, but I'm not sure what he named it.

I wanted to learn from Nalle.  So I paid attention, and here are a few climbing related lessons I picked up.

- Think through boulder problems before getting on them to experiment.  Don't waste any energy.

- Heel hooks can be dynamic.  In some situations they can slide, in others they can be repositioned from a higher hand position.

- Support others early in the session and get to your thing at the end of the day.  Be patient.

While Nalle developed 7c+ and harder, I was happy with 7a+.

My favorite project was at the Fields of Joy.

It was 7b, and I managed to get it done on my last session of the trip.

I'm not going to explain everything I saw or did, because this is a climbing blog.  But seeing the baboons was incredible.  They climb so well and bark at you from the cliffs.  A part of nature telling you to go away.  I didn't listen.

The birds and deer, and new flowers you see there are all so interesting.  The people are kind, and seemed happy to me.  I recommend checking out the rock art areas, and giving yourself some time to see more of South Africa.  Neel's Cottage was also a great place to stay, with friendly owners at a lower price than de Pakhuis.  

That's all the advice I have for this post.  Make the trip happen!