Did someone say...‘Fetch that tree?'

By Kath Fourie

With the finals wrapped up, it was time to head back to camp. Taking advantage of the last hour of sunlight, climbers flopped on the grass, cracked open beers, and kicked the ubiquitous hackey-sack from skanky sneaker to strop to boot. If only it could have stayed such a civilised scene. But then, would that really be climbing?

At 6 o’clock Neil Margetts (fighting swine flu of note) announced that it was time for the PETZL Rock and Road EC 2009 Prize Giving! With a fire blazing away in the massive hearth, the whole crew gathered with drinks in hand to bring the competition to a close. Neil thanked all the people, companies and climbers that have been involved with the PETZL Rock & Road, and his exhaustive list covered a ridiculous amount of names. It just goes to show that this event is community driven, and is of such importance to the SA climbing scene that people are happy to do their part in seeing its success.

PETZL came to the party to hand out prizes, with cash and new ropes (drool, drool) being among the booty. But the best part was when the trio of Ant, Gosia and Julia stood up to make some ‘special’ awards. The climbers had gone way beyond the call of artistic duty and made the raddest cards signed by everyone for Neil (who deserves a medal, a back massage and a crate of whisky for taking the event on), the Non-Stop Adventure Bus Driving team, Sally the Physio, T-Dawg the photo-guy, Derek Marshall the Super-Bolting Machine, the Ondra’s and even the hack who kept bothering people for quotes.

Ending off with the news that the Western Cape will host the PETZL Rock and Road 2010 Trip, the party cracked off with a fantastic spit-braai, awesome salads and fresh food that the scurvied climbers polished off in under 11 minutes. Adam Ondra climbs a 40m 8a in fewer than seven minutes; South African climbers destroy an entire sheep carcass in much the same time – both impressive achievements.

Two informal awards (the trophies, 340ml bottles of Windhoek) were made for the two surprise stand-outs of the trip or more popularly 'The Under-Dog Awards'. These went to Ilse Labuschagne (GP) who came on the trip not seen as one of the stronger climbers, and turned around kicking serious ass, fighting and improving all the way. The boy version went to Ant Hall (WC), who came on the trip in a similar position to Ilse, yet impressed the hell out of the other climbers with excellent flash sends, and good route reading capabilities.

From there on out it was utter chaos. I think that the appearance of several bottles of OB’s, a litre bottle of cheap-ass whisky, Jagermeister down downs and Andrew Pedley on a mission (now known in my books as the Master of Disaster…) could take 99% of the blame for the mayhem that ensued. But when you have Flex dancing in the flames of a raging fire with the best biker moustache ever, 10 dudes without their shirts on in 0˚C temperatures (I still have no idea why they were doing that) and three girls having a ‘6-pack off’ you know that there are darker forces at play.

Highlights for the evening included a game known as ‘pile on’, which was started after several enthusiastic people were moshing to Nirvana (blaring out of the Master of Disasters car) on the lawn. When someone yelled the words ‘Pile On!!’ the littlest member of the moshers was tripped and pinned to the floor by everyone else, with random people running from corners of the camp to jump on top of the human pile of torture. This was well received until Gosia was delivered a swift blow to the eye socket by he who shall remain nameless. Clearly it was accidental, but it did look a lot like someone had coloured Gosia’s eye in with a purple permanent marker this morning.

In further entertainment, when it seemed that the roaring inferno wasn’t hot enough anymore (it was only moderately like hell as opposed to hotter than…) someone had the bright idea to go and collect a tree lying in the dry river bed about 500m away from the fire. I tell you what, it is quite a sight to see 15 headlamps bouncing through the pitch black night with comments like ‘Jissie, bru, don’t be such a dork, else I’m gonna shut you up with a klap to your head, just carry that thing and stop flippin’ complaining’ wafting over the grass.

In the end the tree made its way to the fire, but was so large that the back end formed a limbo pole, which started a whole new set of games that one shouldn’t play when well over the limit. I now have a hole in my warmest jacket, and I have no idea how that happened. Okay so maybe I have some idea.

The PETZL Rock and Road is rad. It is THE climbing event of the year, and it has done so much for the level of climbing in SA that I truly think it merits serious support. I haven’t seen people get on so well, seen such hard cranking or seen people pull together for the love of a sport in a very long time. It’s inspirational, psych inducing and important for the development of OUR sport in OUR country. Hell yeah.

And on that note, cheerio, and I hope you enjoyed the blogs! Oh yes, for anyone who wants to needle Andrew…he was still asleep in his tent when every single other person left the last campsite. My bet is that he wasn't the best company for the drive to Montagu...