Vertical Life

Gariwerd has been my lodestar since I was five. In 1980 my parents bought a hundred acres of land they dubbed ‘Wartook Rise’, a small crest of bush and worthless farm land that sits in Wartook Valley below Gar (Mt Difficult) and the Asses Ears. On an

While nearly everyone in Victoria has been in hard lockdown, elsewhere in Oz people have been getting amongst it. In the Blue Mountains, Leah Dempsey (no doubt) gracefully danced up Search and Destroy (32) at Centennial Glen, her second at the grade

In late September, two members of the Victorian Climbing Club (VCC), Kevin Lindorff (who is also the club’s president) and Glenn Tempest, commenced legal action to attempt to get PV to overturn its decision to deny them permission to climb in Special

In mid August Parks Victoria (PV) announced measures to ‘temporarily restrict access’ to Taipan Wall and Bundaleer/Bugiga in Gariwerd. It was no secret Taipan has quarrying on parts of the wall, so the closure is not a surprise, while it’s been known

On 22 October, Parks Victoria (PV) announced the discovery of a significant Aboriginal quarrying area between the base of the Plaque climbing area and Tiger Wall at Dyurrite/Mt Arapiles. According to PV, ‘The production site, which extends for around

Monday 21st September 2020 – Killiecrankie, Flinders Island. Someone said that it’s easier to just go climbing than grow up. I’d tend to agree as long as your operating notion of what constitutes growing up is watching the world turn to shit around y

I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Like many others, when everything started happening in early 2020, all my plans went out the window. An epic, worldwide climbing trip evaporated and there was literally nothing that could be done about it. Since I’d

The virus has grounded planes, and with that much of the world’s travel has stopped. Lockdowns all around the globe have people shut away. Permits are needed just to leave Australia, and not even Aussies are allowed to freely fly back from overseas.

If you walk down King St in Newtown or Sydney Rd in Brunswick you are bound to pass someone who you recognise from climbing at your gym. There really are a lot of climbers now and gyms are the nodes around which those climbers orbit. Where once climb

8c – to revert to the slightly exclusionary shorthand that climbers often use – has always been one of those milestone grades: if you can climb 33 you’re really good (unless you’re Austrian, in which case you’re just average). Although in this inflat

This year I have had more sleepless nights than normal. And not just because of COVID-19. Sure, living in the age of coronavirus threw up many personal challenges, the primary one being adapting to working from home whilst simultaneously helping my e

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED TAKING PHOTOS? I actually completed a Diploma in Professional Photographic Imaging way back in New Zealand in the early 2000s. Since that time I have had various ebbs and flows of psych, creativity and confidence. I dabbled in

Sometimes climbing photography is an attempt to capture the raw and real emotion of a send (or someone busting a gut trying to). They are going full berko on a route and you are snapping away like crazy and hoping that you got the shot. But sometimes

Smack bang in the centre of Townsville city (and just outside my kitchen window) lies the granite monolith, Castle Hill, known by the Wulgurukaba people as Cootharinga. Overlooked since a handful of routes were established in the ‘90s, and left to ga

''I did that hangboard last night, and maybe that means I'm not 100% recovered…’ 'Yeah, hangboards fuck ya.' Stephen calls back. '…I really noticed being tired on that back section today… Just don't really feel like I can crimp it.' 'I hope I stick t

Yesterday after work I warmed up on the porch hangboard with a cuppa, then 15 minutes later I was pulling onto my project – that is straight up, no bullshit, humdinger madness in my book. I had two burns, linked it to through the first crux, figured

20 October 2020 Dear Lactic Factory, I miss you. More than I thought I would. More than I thought I could. I confess, these past years we have seen each other less and less; the drift of all lives, it is the nature of things. There have been long per

I’m walking along a rock strewn beach in the south of South Australia. Sheer, windswept cliffs of grey and black sandstone with ancient streaks of quartz run alongside me. Salt-loving plants and a tangle of assorted flora cling to the loose soil of t

The tour has been created and conceived by the team behind Vertical Life to celebrate its relaunch following COVID-19 hibernation, and it will make its debut through November and December 2020 with a national cinema tour. This year’s tour includes fo

After discussing the latest scuttlebutt, often the next subject climbers love to talk about is food – what to eat and what to avoid – which supplements to take, and diets. Unfortunately, though, a lot of climbers are poorly informed, and are often co

Not everything goes according to plan. You have clear goals and the training to achieve them, you’re primed and ready to fire, and then the world shifts and lays waste to your plan. That’s 2020, normally those shifts are personal, like getting an inj

PROS: mobile, soft, good looking, excellent to climb in. CONS: durability? When I clock onto the right pair of climbing dacks, I wear the shit out of them, and judging by the seat of my TNF North Dome pants, I have definitely done that. These dacks h

PROS: stable; light; durable; comfortable CONS: stiff, but aren’t they all; on the tricky side to wrestle on The Approach shoe, by its nature, is a thing of promise. It asserts you are going somewhere; indeed more than merely wandering aimlessly, tha

It was The Dream Line (Drømmelinja) on which I found her. I was out with my good friend Torstein, who had bravely agreed to try what was reputed to be one of the top lines at Gygrestolen; a proud, flat-topped granite spire that adorns a heavily fores