Bob

Bob, searching for the next good hold. This route is fairly unusual for flat rock in that it does have a number of nice big holds. It is a fun climb, I'd like to lead it on trad... one day.

Top Belay

J belaying Bob from the top of the route. J is attached to a rock bolt behing him.

note the gear placed in the cracks below J. 

Perfect day

Leaving for Raglan on monday, so the weather today was too good to miss. J, Bob, and I spent the day at flat rock. Here J is climbing a trad route (placing cams, and nuts to clip into to arrest a fall). once he topped out he set up a top anchor and belayed for Bob and I as we climbed up to meet him. 

Michelle's Tomatoes

Bumper crop of Tomatoes this year, We picked this lot, and more, green because they had pulled the plants down to the ground and were in danger of getting eaten by slugs. Some have been made into green tomato chutney, some are hanging in the kitchen ripening and I tried making fried green tomatoes with some. 

No Traffic jam here

Here is a crop of one of the images from that composit, just me, J and the rock. The image is pretty bad, the sun was in the wrong place (or the camera was) it was just an experiment, so next time I shall take more care and hopefully get something more interesting. 

Cleaning the Crag

Before a route is safe to climb it must be cleaned, any loose material is removed. some of the loose material doesn't look lose and would make a very tempting hold, which if used could come off with disastrous effects. Here J has a crow bar behind a large flake, which looks like a great hold, right where you need one, but it had to go. 

Cleaning the crag

This rock was liberated from the crag while we were cleaning a new route. 

Cape Pond Head

Yesterday I visited the new climbing area in the Wilderness area. This is an experimantal photo, I set the camera shooting while J climbed the wall. I selected a few of the images and superimposed them.
I was Belaying for J, but I have removed my self from the image so you see only J climbing.
This image is not as good as I was hoping, but I think I'll try this again. 

15,000,000 candle power!

Seth operating my new torch. 

Lewis' Party

For Lewis birthday party we had a fire in our neighbour's fire pit. Lewis and his friends played spot light and had a lot of fun running around in the dark. 

Lewis' Birthday Party

I got home just in time for Lewis' Birthday. 

Leaving Raglan

Here is the Falconbridge plane, just before we boarded it. 

Snow at east lake

After a few days of wind came the snow, even the helicopters put their gloves on! 

Windy day at east lake

A few days before I left East lake the weathe rtook a turn fo rthe worse, the wind picked up. I was trying to get some interesting fuzzy water shote here, it didn't really work out, and I got quite wet as the waves were breaking and blowing back on me. 

Lights over the camp.

This was fairly early in the evening. I ended up sleeping out infront of the tent last night to get some fresh air and so watch the lights. They were amazing later in the night, lighting from the northern horizon and sometimes 1/2 way to the southern horizon. I had to puit the camera away and try to get some sleep. I was rudly awakened early in the morning by rain! 

Another great show

Northern lights again tonight. I wish i had braught my cable release, for my camera so I could get some exposures of more than 30s. 

Aurora over West Mount

The northern lights were pretty good last night, a bit muted by high cloud, but it made an interesting effect. Here you see out residence, west Mount (the higher part of camp) with the northern lights above. This image was very dark, so I have had to push the levels significantly. Wish i had shot in raw now. 

Core Delivery

Every morning the Chopper delivers the core drilled overnight from the drills. The core is stored in core boxed and packed into a net which is hooked to a long line below the chopper. This is the same method we use to move our bore hole gear.