Résumé: A Rockclimbing Roadtrip in Down Under

Our Trip is over. It wasn't our first overseas trip, but traveling in a threesome this time made it different to previous ones.

When we first booked the flights to Newzealand a year ago we were excited but also a little nervouse about the upcoming journey. We were confident about the feasibility, as Finja had already seen quiet a few european countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy and Macedonia) in her short life. She had handled it really well so far, but none of these trips lasted longer then four successive week.

Finja on one of her first road trips to Italy (less then 2 months after her birth)

The end of January and the whole February were really exhausting. I finished by Bachelorthesis in time and then we had to empty our apartment in Stuttgart. All our furniture and possessions stowed into several family households in Stuttgart's surroundings and finally it was time to catch the plane in Frankfurt.

Goodbye Cake

The flight was incredible long (33 hours?!), I was sick with a cold and Finja kept us busy carrying her around in the airplane. The better part of the flight was actually good, only on the final bit she had enough of air conditioning, narrow space, airplane light and got a bit grumpy. Anyways, happily we arrived in Christchurch where we had the big luck to get picked up by our friend Greg.

It did not take us long to find a convenient campervan for our planned time of 6,5 weeks traveling through the beauty of New Zealand and so we left our friends place soon. We spent most of the time on the South Island, driving down to the incredibly wet Milford Sound (6.715mm rain/year) where we climbed at a beautiful Little Babylon. We visited Wanaka, Queenstown and Paynes Ford for some climbing and spent four weeks in the world-famous bouldering destination Castle Hill.

Finja in one of her first boulder problems - Castle Hill, New Zealand

 When I visited Castle Hill five years earlier, it was colder and many climbers from all over the world spent their time here. It was a big crowd of motivated climbers and a lot of fun. This time the number of other climbers was quiet limited and most of the time it was really warm with no wind. Anyways, the boulderproblems did not suffer in quality and we enjoyed our time a lot. I could climb great problems as "Interstellar Overdrive" V10, "Prince Tui Teka" V9, "Snake Eyes" V9, "Monkey and the Magic Peach" V8 while Katinka had a fun time sending several problems up to V6 after her pregnancy.

Castle Hill, New Zealand

In the end of march, one month after the trip had started we headed back to the airport to pick up my Brother Jochen, his wife Miriam and their daughter Paula. They had taken the opportunity for a longdistance flight as well, using the parental leave. We climbed with them for a couple of days, before we had to leave for the northern parts of New Zealand as our flight to Australia was booked for a date two weeks earlier than theirs.

On New Zealands North Island we stopped at a friends place in Wellington for a couple of nights and sampled some of the local climbing before we ended up in Auckland. We had a really stressfull week trying to sell our van for a reasonable price, flying out to Sydney and buying another van in Australia. But thanks to another friend in Sydney we had a place to sleep and to get ready for the second part of our trip.

Katinka at Turakirae Head, Wellington

We had three great weeks in the Blue Mountains, as many other climbers and friends were around for Easter Holidays. Most of the time there was someone else at the same crag and we could climb while Finja was playing or sleeping at the crags base. By that time she was already crawling a lot, but luckily not walking or running yet.

An unnamed V6 at the Black Cave, Sydney

In the end of April my brother arrived in the Blue Mountains and while we climbed together for another week we proofed his ability to climb hard and sent "Alpha Leather", 32 (8b+).
Together we checked out some of the Sydney Bouldering Areas and climbed many problems such as the ultra classic "L'homme Obu", V11 at the Balkham Hills. Katinka and Miriam both grabbed a quick ascent of "Paratroopin" V8 the same day.

Sending "L'homme Obu", V11 - The Balkam Hills, Sydney

Our main goal for australia was climbing in the Grampians Nationalpark, a world class sandstone area 300km to the west from Melbourne. Unluckily a massive bushfire swept through the Nationalpark a couple of months ago and the majority of the climbing got shut down due to security and regeneration purpose. We evaded to the less known southern Grampians, The Victoria Range where we found a great amount of rock around the Buandik Campground. The climbing there is great, but we were pretty lonesome and the humidity and precipitation are way worse here than in the northern parts.

I think we did the best out of this situation by brushing new boulders, doing a decent amount of first ascents and publishing a pdf guidebook. After beeing annoyed by humidity and precipitation for a couple of weeks we psyched for a couple days off. We had booked a flight to Bali, Indonesia where our friends Manu and Marie joined us for exploring another culture. It was different and stressfull, but an interesting and great experience at the same time. Unfortunately Finja catched a cold on her last days as she did not like the constantly change in between the local climate and the air-conditioned rooms. But her cold only lasted for a couple of days.

A few days off ... 8 days of vacation from our trip in Bali, Indonesia

 Back in Australia we returned to Buandik to finish off some Projects. Especially I had a big goal, a line I had scouted on our first days which had not been climbed yet. It took me an endless amount of days to finally finish it on our last day in the area. "Simplicity", fb8A+ was a great archivement for me and probably my hardest climb ever. Katinka also returned to her old strength and climbed "Hillary Step" V9, "Northern Fire" V8/9 and several others.

First Ascent of "Simplicity", V12 - Buandik, Southern Grampians

 As mentioned earlier the climbing here is really good, but we spent way to much time here. We had planned to climb a lot in the northern areas, which where totally shut down due to the fires and we were climbing by ourselfes only most of the time. It's just a different level of fun if you have great people around you. Additionally we had some bad luck with the weather god and many rainy days, which bit into our motivation as well.

Our plan for future trips is to avoid too long periods at the same place. A maximum of 4 weeks in one spot should be enough to tick the most stunning climbs in an area, but afterwards you loose motivation our you have to focus to much on a limited number of climbs .. such as "Simplicity" which I almost gave up with. We had also hoped to meet more people along our australia trip, which was a bit disappointing.

Katinka in "Hillary Step", V9 - Buandik, Southern Grampians

Finally it was kind of a relief to say goodbye to the Grampians after 2,5 months. Finjas Grandparents arrived at the airport of Melbourne and wanted to join us on our a roadtrip back to the Blue Mountains and Sydney. They enjoyed 3,5 weeks with us and their granddaughter, while we explored the landscape of Victoria and New South Whales. They joined us at several rocks to watch us climb or took over Finja and occupied her perfectly.

Our campervan accompanied by my parents bigger campervan

Ulrich, Finja, Katinka, Rita and Ulrike (left-to-right)

As they flew home, we only had two weeks left to sell our campervan once again. We spent some days within the CBD of Sydney switching inbetween busy advertising sessions and bouldering at the local areas. This time we had more luck on the car sale and recieved a good price and we finished the trip with some hard boulderproblems in our ticklist. Within the last two weeks I did "Contact" V12, "Uncle Joe's Banana Shack" V11 and "Groove Terminator" V11 while Katinka flashed her first V6 "Crack Attack" at The Villas and sent "Paddington" 26 in the Blue Mountains pretty fast.

Katinka in the flash ascent of "Crack Attack", V6 - The Villas, Sydney
Finja in an unknown V0-

It was really convenient to have a rentalcar for the last couple of days, as we did not have to take any stressful public transport and we did not have to trouble any of our friends by asking for a ride to the airport.

Thanks to all our friends Down Under who helped making this trip to what it was. A great time off!
And thanks to our sponsors who assisted us with their products:
Thanks Chillaz for equiping us with comfortable, great looking and fair produced clothes.
Thanks Evolv for supplying us with quality climbing shoes, especially our favorites: the high performance Shaman and the brand new Nexxo.

And last but not least:
Thanks to the Light my Fire Team for sending us samples of their whole product range, and many many sporks which were given away to friends here and there every now and then. And thanks for convincing us to start blogging in english.

Fontainebleau

The past week was warm. Really warm! Every single day was around 20-25ºC with no wind and a lot of sun and humidity, which made it impossible to climb really hard. Anyways .. it was a great week. We met many of our old friends and changed our focus from climbing hard to climbing a lot.

Morning Hangout at Rocher aux Sabots

Around the village of Fontainebleau, located about 50km away from Paris, there is a huge area of sandstone bouldering. The huge are is known as one of the biggest and best climbing areas in the world and has a long history back to the 1960's and beyond. One speciality of Fontainebleau are so called Parcours.

Rocher aux Sabots - Red Parcour, Problem Number 9

A Parcour contains several boulderproblems which are marked by colored numbers and will lead you through the whole sector. To complete a Parcour you will have to climb every single boulder it contains, which may be a count between 20 and 80.

Rocher aux Sabots - Graviton, fb7A

Moritz Eisenlauer in Apremont

 As I realized how warm it really was, I decided to not even try to climb hard. I went for Parcours instead and along the week I finished a couple of them:

• Blue Parcour in Rocher Guichot (20 boulders)
• Red Parcour in Rocher aux Sabots (34 boulders)
• Red Parcour in Franchard Isatis (50 out of 62 boulders)
• Red Parcour in Bas Cuvier (42 boulders)

Finjas birthday present

Finja loved it in Fontainebleau. As a late birthday present by her grandparents (the ones visiting us in Australia) she got a Bobby Car last week, and Fontainebleau has a lot of sandy, flat access paths. Her godfather Moritz and Julia hauled her everywhere, we almost did not use our baby carrier this week. :)

Finja and her chauffeur Moritz

Finja and her chauffeur Moritz

Around haveway through the week, more friends arrived and we did hang our a little bit at Peter Würth's rented Gîte, were we could use the shower and were we cooked on our gazoline stoves in the garden.

Peters Gîte in Noisy-sur-Ecole

 On our very last day we went to the most famous and overcrowded area Bas Cuvier where I did another long Parcour. One of the boulders included was "La Marie-Rose", fb6A. It is an absolut classic, as it is the first fb6A in Fontainebleau and was first climbed long ago in 1946. Even though fb6A is not a though grade, this climb is though and tricky! Katinka struggeled on it on previous trips and never sent it, but this time she did it!

"Le Marie-Rose", fb6A - Bas Cuvier © Axel Niermann

"Le Marie-Rose", fb6A - Bas Cuvier © Axel Niermann

Now we are back in good old germany and our place of residence has settlet: Next week I have to attent a first introduction event for my Masters Degree in Computer Science in Freiburg where we will move into an apartment in Merzhausen!

www.chalkonrock.com

Enough of settling in

The last couple were really busy for us. We reactivated our mobilephone contracts, did many loads of laundry, intensivated our search for an affordable apartment and did a lot of paperwork. We enjoyed delicouse meals cooked by Katinkas grandma, german bread and other things we had missed for a while now.

Back in Australia I recieved an eMail from TMMS telling me, they used one of my recent photographs in their 2015 climbing calendar and I recieved a brand new copy yesterday. I was stoked to see, they did not only use one photo, but even four!

If you are looking for an christmas present for someone interested in climbing go ahead an have a look for the new TMMS "rocks - Best of Bouldering" calendar for the year 2015:
http://www.tmms-shop.de/kalender-rocks.html

But enough of no climbing for now, either tonight or tomorrow in the morning we will pack the car and start driving to Fontainebleau, France - 6,5 hours away from Stuttgart. We will meet up with some old friends there to climb together. We will be back in one week (or maybe two weeks?), before I have to attend my university courses in mid october.

read back soon,
www.chalkonrock.com

The journey is over

We spent 5 nights in our BigW tent in the Blue Mountains. Our tent was set up on a free campground in Megalongvalley, only 5km away from Blackheath and many of the cliffs. After the increasing heat in Sydney it was great to be back at an elevation of 1000+ meters, providing fresher air.

Our van is the smallest ...

We did not stress ourselfes to much, but enjoyed the last days few of our journey a lot. In the mornings we would start late, after having a good breakfast and a few Cappuccinos and hanging out in the sun for a bit.

Manu and Finja having fun

Middays we went climbing. I did a bunsh of easier routes up to 26 and Katinka almost sent "White Linen", 27 at Centennial Glen. Manu managed to climb his hardest route yet: "Jack High", 19 and I climbed up the neighbour route to take some photos of him.

Manu in "Jack High", 19 - Upper Shippley, Blue Mountains

The evenings we usually sat around the big campfire, drinking wine and cooking dinner while getting rid of all our leftovers. On Monday evening we had to celebrate Manu's 26th birthday. Up to 16 persons were sitting around the fire and enjoying his 12 bottles of wine.

Campfire

On wednesday, two days before our flight back home we returned to Sydney. We returned our tent to a BigW store for a full refund exchanged our van sale cash from AUD $ into EUR € and started packing our luggagae at James Place in Sandringham where we would spend the last two nights.

We did one last bouldering session at the Wing Cave where I had tried "Groove Terminator", V11 four months ago. It took me quiet some body tension and shoulder power to do, but I finished the session topping it out. Great present for the last climbing day in australia!

Sending "Groove Terminator", V11 - Wing Cave, Sydney

 On friday we returned our rental car at the airport and checked in without any problems. This time we only had 65kg of checked luggagae and only a few carry-on bags (Camera + Notebook + Backpack). The flight was long ... 30h ... but more or less ok and in Frankfurt we were picked up by Katinkas Grandpa.

Last day in Sydney

It was a nice evening with good wine, delicous dinner and family.

Now we will start the next mission:
I have to choose which Master Programm I will attend from mid october. I got accepted for a Computer Science Master in Stuttgart, Freiburg and Innsbruck. Time for a decision ... Every location has it's advantages and disadvantages, but we already canceled the idea of Innsbruck for now.

Stuttgart would be comfortable, as Katinka could go back into her old job, we know many people who could look after Finja when we need some time for ourselfes or when we train in the gym and we have a couple of places where we can stay until we have found a proper apartment.

Freiburg seems to be a really nice city to life in as well, but would meen a loss in comfort and maybe a lot of boredom for Katinka while not having a proper job opportunity yet.

Anyway, there's a lot to organize within the next three weeks and we still need to meet up with Finjas godfather Moritz for a one week trip to Fontainebleau, France (Maybe next week??)

read back soon on
www.chalkonrock.com

7 days to go

The past week went by really fast, as it was full of action, stress and finally success.
After my parents had left we met up with a few people beeing interested in our van. We had 3 persons test driving the van on saturday and several more chatting with us and asking about an appointment to do so in the following week.


We just wanted to get over it as fast as possible. It's great to have time to sell a car (in contrary to our last van sale in Auckland), but it's also great to have it off the mind and enjoy the last days of the trip instead. We hoped for the best but everyone wanted to think for a couple of days and so we left the CBD and visited our friends Steve, Joe and Tara 40km away from the stressfull citycenter. We spent two nights in their guestroom (Thanks for that!), doing laundry, cleaning the van and bouldering at Jessicas, a little crag nearby.

Axel in "Hairy Joe's Banana Shack", V11 - The Villas, Sutherland, Sydney

As we had more appointments for wednesday we decided to head back to the southern part of Sydney on thuesday to climb at The Villas and spend one more night in our van. We got there in the early afternoon as we were waiting for our laundry to dry off, but having so many van concerns in our mind it was enough climbing time for the moment. Katinka did "Help", V6 and "Burgers", V5 while I ended up ticking both "Savage", V8 and "Hairy Joe's Banana Shack", V11 in less then 15 Minutes each, which was really cool and unexpected.

Katinka flashing "Crack Attack", V6 - The Villas, Sutherland, Sydney

We ended the day in the Price Edward Park on a beautiful picnicarea next to the river only a couple kilometers away. Potentially our last dinner and night with the van, as our two appointments for the next day both promised to buy the van. We needed that kind of a backup solution as the first one to meet sounded a bit strange and not to trustfull. Who would be willing to book a flight from the Gold Coast to Melbourne only to pickup a car he has not seen before, if not a pisher?

Anyways we slept well and long, dropped most of our remaining luggagae at James Place in Sandringham and went back to King Cross near the CBD. The first guy indeed showed up and we sealed the deal. Now our wheeled home belonges to the venecuelean Vincente who had been on working holiday visa in the middle of nowhere for the past four months. His only chance to buy a campervan was to travel to a bigger city after sorting through available vans online and deciding for ome from afar. He even found our blog and read our story before he decided he will trust in our van.

Sold our van to Vincente from Venezuela

An hour later, after drinking an celebration cappuccino in a little café we went to a local Avis branch to pickup a tiny rental car. 9 day to go! Even though I'm still missing one month to complete the 25, the lady next to our respondant knew a trick how she could upload my drivers licence id, avoiding the systems age check.

That done, we took off. We ate a huge hamburger each and organized the next business meeting. At 8pm I would stock up my camera gear by a Canon 35mm F1.4 lens. Psyched!

We spent the night at James places, borought a rope and decided to drive back to the Blue Mountains the next night. After sleeping long we went back to the Villas for a little bit, mainly to take a few photos of the Bananashack Problem and to check out "Contact", V12 for a little bit.

20 Minutes Ascent of "Contact", V12 - The Villas, Sutherland, Sydney

The moves went down pretty fast and not even 20 Minutes adter my first try i had it on my tick list. Sick! Katinka succeeded as well as she flashed her first V6 boulder "Crack Attack". This one has taken me two days to complete and even today i needed another three gos to finish it.

By now, we have arrived at our camping spot in Megalong Valley, Blue Mountains. We borought the thermarests of our friends Manu and Marie and bought a cheep tent at BigW.

7 days to go!

www.chalkonrock.com

Back in the big City

In the Blue Mountains we had mostly good weather. Katinka climbed a cool route she had tried on her very first day here in April, "Mt Paddington" 25. Back then she was not able to do all the moves, but this time it looked quiet easy as she cruised up the wall. Other then that is was nice to get a little bit of easy climbing after three weeks of roadtripping the coast.

The whole family together.

The only rainy day in the Mountains we used for a long hike from Katoomba down into the forests valley to an old coal mine. It was really damp in the beginning with a seight of only 50 meters, but then it cleared up more and more, so we could really enjoy the beautiful scenery.

A rainy hike around Katoomba, Blue Mountains

Finja walking on the table of the campervan.

The coalmine itself was less interesting to see then expected! Too touristy and too few new things after the big gold mine tour in Ballarat a couple weeks back. My mum and my sister both were really psyched to ride the (supposately) steepest tram of the world to avoid the hike back to the car. With angles up to 55º it took them up in no time, while we others did the 45 Minutes hike in just 20 Minutes. We also met again with Manu and Marie and climbed with them for a day before we headed down to the big City.

Bussiness while climbing ... talking to an interested testdriver

 Our visitors returned their huge campervan and checked into their hotel and we did almost three CBD seightseeing days together: Sidney Opera House, The Rocks, Town Hall, Restaurants, Cafés, etc...

The Sydney Opera House

We also used the time to advertise our van for sale, as we only have two weeks left in australia. We spreaded 20 car-for-sale prints in various hostels around the city and now we hope for best luck.

Yesterday we had our last evening with our guests, drinking good wine and having great dinner at The Rocks, one of Sydneys nice city parts. By now they should be sitting in the airplaine.

www.chalkonrock.com

From Melbourne to Sydney

As we drove through Melbourne again our van failed ...
It would suddenly loose every bit of power and would only work in first and second gear (on the highway!). We tried to make some more kilometers by switching between LPG and Petrol mode, which helped a little bit but as we continued our journey we had to use the emergency lane more and more frequently to let the faster cars pass by.

Breakdown, checking what's gone wrong.

 Suddenly there was a loud bang and a few moments later the car started drifting a bit. As i stopped i saw the reason right away: A flat on the highway! I switched to our spare wheel as fast as possible, because I did neither have a breakdown triangle nor a reflective west and did not know the consequences if catched by the police. The job was done fast and right at the next highway exit we parked at a gazstation where we boiled a cup of coffe and took a break.

Reataching the air filter

 Soon after, the big campervan of my parents returned to us, they had not noticed our struggles and continued for another 20km. With our sparewheel we drove back a couple of kilometers to a KMart Brake and Tyre Service. Luckily they told us the flat wheel is repairable ... but not today ... (As usually in such a situation is was friday evening ...). We had more luck at a Beaurepair Shop closeby and 30$ later the flat was fixed. The first half of the disaster was solved!

Regarding our powerless van problem we had to wait til the morning. Using Google's help we found one single garage in the whole area, which would be open saturdays. We woke up early to be the very first customers and had luck after the boss saw Finja smiling. He changed his position and started to look after our car. He cleaned the air filter which was not broken, but pretty dirty and after an unsuccessfull testdrive he changed all four ignition plugs. We paid him a fair price and our car was ready to hit the road once again.

The big and the little one

The next few days we did a lot of driving. We took the scenic costal route from Melbourne to Sydney, visited Philipps Island and had many stops at beautiful beaches. We saw many warning signs, not to go swimming, due to big waves and dirty water and indeed, the sea was not as beautiful and clear as it used to be in the beginning of our trip. A lot of brown dirt, big and uneasy waves made the sea impressive to watch, but calmed down our motivation to go for a swim.

Halfway in between Melbourne and Sydney (around Sale) we met some egrets

Finjas grandpa on a photo hunt

After 5 days of driving we had another 1100km on the odometer and finally arrived in the Blue Mountains. Here we'll spend a couple of days before my parents trip will come to an end in Sydney. On Wednesday they will return the campervan, check in in one of the CBD's hotels and after another two seightseeing days in the city they are ready to return back home to germany.

www.chalkonrock.com