Being in Borneo though a stick clip is never farther than the closest patch of bamboo. While the rest of the group was foraging for bamboo I started sizing up the one route whose stalagmites actually touch all the way down, Two Egg Bacon Burger, one of the first and finest of the routes here and whose namesake I’d get to experience later that day. My query of “is it hard?” was answered with a french grade and its australian equivlient both of which told me nothing. That they seemed somewhat impressed that I’d elected to warmup with an on sight attempt of the Two Egg Bacon Burger gave me pause for concern. I certainly didn’t want to find myself bouncing between stalagmites like a life size pin ball game.
Launching into the opening sequence in my four sizes two big borrowed shoes and no chalk I quickly started to appreciate just how steep the overhang was. The insufferably humid heat instantly sent rivers of salty sweat into my eyes and down my arms where my chalkless hands lie defenseless. “Are you guys sure there’s nothing in these pockets that can kill me?” I nervously asked, up to that point in the trip it had seemed that all the fauna of Borneo was in a highly competitive race to eat me. After resigning myself to blindly plunge my hands into all the holes in an attempt to find the best holds, not necessarily the most positive, but more the one’s with the least spiders, I was set- tling into the climb and quickly becoming enamored with the three-dimensional nature of the climbing in the cave, super pumpy but with great smooth white jugs in a variety of amorphous shapes.
Minutes later, lowering from the chains, a hot sweaty mess, huffing like a life long chain smoker, devastatingly hungover I was having the time of my life and bask- ing in a comforting bliss at the realization that I was part of some bigger tribe, a people who would go out of their way so that they could share the local goods with someone they didn’t know, literally from the other side of the planet, who was on a one day stopover. Sure I’d probably still grumble about the crowds when I got back to my local crags but for right now....
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climber MAGAZINEism |
JULY AUGUST 2011 |
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