Mixing it up

Rupert on the way up( pitch 3)

Rupert at the summit


Aaron and Rupert have done a new mixed line on the West face of Double cone, Remarkables: to the Left of their line Ikon from last year.
They described it as "hard, scary, and awesome"

8 pitches, M6 340m (100m of which is M6)
Name not quite decided yet

I'll get him to edit this but by all accounts lots of M6 ground( pitches 2, 3, and 4), and run out in some places.( I'm glad I wasn't there)
Body chimneys, offwidths and that's only pitch 2!
New snow made the approach and descent slow going and they left the house at 7 and returned at 11pm. I think about 7 hrs only were on the route however. Either way Aaron was extremely tired when he finally made it in the door, and hardly left the couch for 24hrs

Coronet Peak opens

Sally on Coronet taken by Nigel Burtwell
Opening day we went up Coronet Peak with Nigel who had come down from Auckland and Tony
Tony was on his first day since '92 and Nigel was back on ski's after 12 years boarding. They did really well and after a couple of runs we were whipping along. The queues were quite long so Aaron and I took off at lunch time and left the boys to it

first day of the season

After alot (60cm) of snow in the last 48 hours we decided to hike up coronet peak for a snowboard
Aaron had touring gear but I had to snowshoe and he carried by board most the way...that's true love! i made him desert for payback.

Coming down the snow was really thick

Sometimes so thick you completely stopped and had to walk!

aaron and the view.
hard work but good to be up the mountain, and getting the legs going

Gold Coast

we wandered back from surfers to Pacific fair and on to nanny's one day.

Aaron enjoyedthe 'View' at sufers!
I went for a body surf it's great to get in the Ocean for a change

me near broadbeach?

aaron bought a couple of raffle tickets for this Shelby as both he and LP talk about them at work

Thai restaurant on the last night

With really cool furniture!

Frog Butress/mount french

We went climbig at Frog butress.The area is all natural pro climbing just a few hundred meters from the carpark..Ver convenient. it would be a bit better a little later in winter as by 9.30 am it was getting very warm.

The first climb we did was clockwork orange corner 13

aaron on the 19 start to Electronic flag?

At the top of a 16 we saw this...we went down quickly!
by the way the grades are stiff a 16 will be a NZ 18 or more like 20 if it is polished! some of the 3 star routes are quite polished these days but i guess 50 years of traffic will do that

we met another NZer and finally got a photo of the two of us I am leading an 11...hardcore!

Boyland and Aaron's dads

We had a nice lunch at tamborine mountain with cheryl, dean (aaron's dad) and nanny the went back to Dean's new house.

kenny the buthcher bird. dean feeds the birds and all kinds come on to the porch to visit

dean and helen grow the red Dragon fruitand the white is from a neighbour we had a nice wine and fruit afternoon tea

Aaron and his dad...did aaron have too much wine or is it just a bad photo?
we popped by again the next morning on our way to boonah as helen(dean's wife) was out the first visit.

dean and helen outside their queenslander style house

Dean on his new Mower Helen won!

mothers day on the gold coast

We arrived at the gold coast and went off to lunch at the crystal cottage a crystal /jewellery shop with a cafe and tarot reading

cheryl and Nanny outside the crystal cottage
we were with Aaron's nanny Peg, Aunt cheryl, Bruce, Sister Xander, Neil, Kahn, cody and connor. the boys are really awesome kids...a lot of fun!

The whole clan.