The "Cool Club" Incident...

Mary-Anne and Yohanas Bouldering on Tonsai Roof .

Mary-Anne, Eva and I and George.

Bouldering on Tonsai Roof

This past week has been spent hanging out and of course climbing with new friends. Evan and George, Mary-Anne and Yohanas (two really nice couples from Austria), Adam from Vancouver, and my friend Cheung as well.

One of the more interesting days for me was when it was pouring rain. Because of the rain there were not too many areas we could climb so we ended up bouldering on the Tonsai Roof and Wall.

Cheung and his crew of friends who are long-timers in Tonsai (Kitty was in Tonsai for 3 years, Bon for 2 and Fid comes every year). I call them the “cool club.” Let me clarify that statement. They are called the “cool club” not b/c they are actually cool but b/c they think they’re cool. Nah, actually they are fabulous climbers and really interesting characters!

After the rain stopped I wanted to try this 6C climb on the Tonsai Wall called Viking in Heat. Yohanas lead the climb and I top roped it. I didn’t finish the climb so Mike (who had already had a few too many at this point) came up with this great idea to put the climb up again with my draws so I could try it a second time…

I didn’t quite think this one through b/c what would happen if I couldn’t climb it? Plus it was already late in the day and people were coming to Freedom Bar (where I was climbing) for a beer or a meal. I’m definitely not good enough to climb there with an audience but too late now, my draws were up. I had no choice but to go up…

After spending a good half hour or more on this climb I called down to Cheung to lower me. Defeated. My arms were pumped and my mind was going a mile a minute as to how I was going to get my draws down.

Bon, Kitty and Fid were still at Freedom Bar so I offered 2 beers to whoever would go up and get my draws down.

They are all stellar climbers (7b) so I figured this climb would be a breeze for any one of them.

After a little persuasion, or maybe a lot, Fid agreed to climb. However the beers apparently affected his climbing ability and he was up there for about 40min before finally completing the climb. We all sat there watching and heckling him as he went flying off the rock at the crux time again.

When Fid finally got down, he was completely knackered! Later on I caught up with them all at the Banyon Tree (their usual restaurant) and now it was my turn to be heckled. Fid now had this huge gash in his knee from this knee bar move on the 6C climb. On his bandage someone had written Evil Erin. I didn’t live that one down for a few days!!