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Tonight I replaced my old climbing shoes with a pair of Evolv Quests. Chris and I spent some time at the climbing gym and so I tried breaking them in. They seemed to climb just fine in the gym, although they still give new-shoe pain in my toes. At the time when my toes weren’t hurting, though, the shoes did feel slightly less sensitive than my previous pair. But I’ll wait until they’ve broken in a bit before deciding.
A friend of mine, Felix, is visiting SA for the next few weeks. Chris and I took him out to Silvermine yesterday to get some climbing done.
Standard butt shot of an abseiler
Abseiling in to the crag was fun: at the end of it we were suspended in the air, feet touching nothing until we reached the bottom — although by this stage the bottom wasn’t far away. The serenity that comes when you’re hanging free from everything is something I enjoy a lot.
Felix clipping in to a bolt
The rest of the day was good fun, if uneventful. But it made me think of the changing face of my fear of heights / falling: I led the abseil down, and didn’t feel too nervous clipping in to the abseil or stepping over the edge. And these days I barely feel nervous when reaching the top of a route, or cleaning a route, or just enjoying the view. I can feel something that could grow into fear, but it’s at the back of my mind — like a forgotten word on the tip of your tongue. Thankfully, this particular word usually stays forgot.
But then I can still get nervous and sometimes out-and-out scared doing silly things, like walking along a trail with a steep drop-off to one side. Moments like that are extremely frustrating, but hopefully more exposure is going to help me cope in the areas where it still affects me.
Yesterday I felt the fear when we were climbing out of the crag: I’d reached the top of a route and was sitting on a three-by-two-or-so meter ledge, unclipped but perfectly safe. Still, I had to take a few minutes to relax enough before I could do a short (and safe) three meter climb up a chimney at the back of the ledge to top out and reach the path down.
So frustrating. But at least I’m coping with it substantially better than when I started, when it was fear and nerves all of the time.
After climbing, we landed up at Olympia Cafe for wine, supper, and relaxing. 
I had a great climbing session tonight. It was my first time back indoors after a few months of outdoor climbing, and I’ve missed it. I always come away from time spent in the gym feeling as if I’ve worked harder than I do outdoors — although the mental aspects of climbing outside are so much more challenging and interesting, trying to manage both my fear and any over-confidence I might feel during a climb.
I climbed a great 22 tonight on top-rope. At the time it felt as if I just flew up it, since all the moves came together for me in a way that they usually only do on easier routes. I also managed to visualise climbing the route beforehand, and the climb worked out almost exactly as I saw it. I did fall once, at the crux. It was a stretchy bit, that required smearing and placing a foot and hand on the same grip, but the second time I didn’t have any problems with the move, and felt stable all the way through.
I wish every 22 felt like that.
One of the great things about climbing at Higgovale is how beautiful the quarry is. Tonight, while I was at the top of a pitch untying the equipment in the approaching twilight, an owl started hooting. It was the end of a climb, I was safely secured at the top, and I had a moment to just relax and enjoy the dusk, the cool breeze. The owl. And the whole quarry below me.
On the walk out you can see the city bowl below you, still sunlit enough to clearly see the buildings and their colours, but now the buildings also have their lights on, those darker yellow lights and the bluish florescents and halogens.
So pretty.
And it seems that the paper I submitted has been published on the journal’s website, here. I think it’s been available for a few weeks now, although I’m not sure when it’ll be published in print.
The amount of work I put in to it is frightens me. The paper’s a writeup of my masters, which I finished off at night while working a full-time job during the day. Then there were the examiners’ (thankfully limited – I finished those in a day) corrections to my thesis, followed by the whole paper process: choosing what went in, cutting that down so that it fit into the length restrictions, cutting down the tables, submitting, working on reviewers’ changes, looking over the proofs. I am very relieved that that part of my life is finally over.
And now for the PhD 
My paper finally seems to be out of the editing phase. This morning I got an email from the journal saying that editing is now over, and they’re happy with it as it is. Next I should be seeing the page proofs, unless there are any major formatting problems. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be none.
Also, it seems that South African National Parks are the people who put up the gate at the Higgovale Quarry, apparently as a way of keeping muggers and the like off the mountain. The key is going to be copied and made available to people, although I haven’t entirely discovered how yet. But I have the contact number of the person from SANParks who manages Higgovale, so will be phoning them soon.
Chris and I went climbing tonight. Our first stop was the Higgovale Quarry up the road from me, which turned into a bit of a bust: it seems that someone has decided to put up a really swish safety gate across the entrance, with a huge padlock locking it. There was no signage explaining it, so I asked some people who were walking their dogs if they knew anything. They said that the gate hadn’t been up yesterday, and seemed fairly surprised themselves by the whole affair.
We decided not to abseil in and instead went off to CityRock where the bad night generally continued: I struggled up what should have been relatively easy routes, and tired myself out far quicker than I usually do.
Oh well.
I hope this gate at Higgovale gets itself sorted out soon. Abseiling in whenever we want to climb would be a bit irritating. I really hope that it’s not one of the residents in the area getting snotty about all the climbers in the quarry – but from the uber-swishness of the gate and no official signage I do have some bad feelings about it.
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