Kachoong

I am now back in the U.S. but a final Aussie blog to close out the chain of events from the rest of my trip. I met a solid group of people at Arapiles that I was climbing with every day for about 2 weeks. We all hit it off really well and consisted of a young Belgian climber by the name of Fabi, two Seattle firefighters Doug and Lukic, two traveling Aussies Al and Acey, a good friend of theirs from Melbourne Juzzy (short for Justin of course), and Dave an Aussie turned Texan after marrying his American wife. During our stay we did many of the notable climbs in Arapiles and still left a lifetime of classic climbs to do. We would usually have several ropes going at once in a particular area so we could get a lot of climbs in. The entire climbing area was almost 100% traditional climbing, which for the non climber means there are no bolts pre-placed in the rocks and you must put your own form of removable protection in as you ascend to prevent you from having a long fall. I particularly enjoyed this element of it because I got the opportunity to lead climb several climbs without having brought my own traditional climbing gear over and just borrowing my partners. It also tends to make what would be an easier bolted route a more complex and difficult climb. It's kind of like doing puzzles as you are climbing to find the right piece of protection to place in the right size cracks / pockets / abnormalities of the rock. Anyway, I bagged the trip down to Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road I had planned to have an extended stay at Arapiles, which in hind site didn't exactly turn out in my favor. On the day I was planning on leaving to drive back to Sydney all the guys were going to do a route called Kachoong early in the morning so they could be the first ones on it. Kachoong is probably the most notable / talked about / photographed / and fallen on climb in Arapiles and perhaps Australia. I wasn't about to miss a chance to do it so I figured I'd go do this last route in the morning and start my drive by early afternoon. The climb is named Kachoong because that's the noise they say the rope makes if you fall while going over the hardest part of it. Funny, because when I fell on it the only noise I heard was the loud crack of my lower leg breaking. What had happened was I had my foot turned sideways in a horizontal crack / flake in the rock while I was upside down in order to stay on the wall. As I moved past that part to get back up onto the vertical wall I stretched out and pulled but was unable to move up any higher because my foot had moved in the crack to become trapped. This left me with a few seconds left in the most difficult part of the climb to hang on and move back down to try and extricate my foot. Well time ran out and I couldn't free my foot so as I fell past it my leg became a fulcrum and was finally freed when the falling weight of my body broke my leg. I guess somethings gotta give. It was the better of two possible outcomes, the other being upside down with a broken leg and my foot still being caught. That would have been interesting. When I got down I wasn't sure if my leg was broken because there was no deformity or displacement but I was unable to stand on it. I was hoping it was just bruised but we all heard the pop and had a pretty good idea what it may have been from. I hobbled on one leg with a stick to the top of where we were climbing at and eventually was carried out to an access road on the back of a big hunky Seattle fireman, every woman's dream huh? When we got back to camp I just iced the leg and the guys helped me pack up what I had left in camp, then drove into Horsham which is about 25 miles away. Thought I'd try out Australia's health care system, which is free to Australians, but costs to anybody else unless your country has reciprocity, which we don't. After an X ray it showed a clean fracture of my fibula, which is probably the better of the two lower leg bones because it's more supportive than weight bearing. First fracture in 29 years of age, I guess that's not doing too bad considering I'm a pretty active person. They put a backslab with some bandages on which is basically just a fancy personalized splint. They wanted me to wait to see a physician in the U.S. before casting due to the swelling that may take place post injury and during the flight home. Surprisingly and fortunately, because you have to pay them upfront for your treatment, I was expecting a much bigger bill than what it was being in one the most expensive places I've ever traveled. I'm thinking if a beer is 8 dollars a pint in the bar I could only imagine what this little surprise is going to be. Any guesses? 230 dollars for an ER visit, X rays, and splint! Wow, seriously, I'll pay cash! After I left the hospital I had a bit of a dilemma on my hands. I had no crutches because they wouldn't let you take them unless you could return them and I needed to get to Sydney which was about 700 miles away. I had to get to Sydney because that's where I had to return the van, I could relax at Dave's house, and where my flight back home left from. So basically, I could sit around Horsham across from the hospital in my van with my leg up and have to try and go get food when needed etc.. and still have to figure out some way to get back to Sydney, or I could just suck it up and make a big push to Dave's where they could help me sort things out. I went with option B and did the first leg of the trip that night until about 1230 when I was getting tired and sore. Next morning I was up by 6 or 7 and back on the road for a straight shot to Sydney which I got to about 3:30 that afternoon. The only real difficult part was at gas stations, which were the only places I'd pull over to stop at, and I had to hop on one leg to go inside and pay. It was nice being back at Dave and Pav's as they were more than helpful with everything I had to do and I could relax with my leg elevated. I had to tell Dave the bad news that we wouldn't be having our climbing trip to the Blueys that weekend as I had promised him. After seeing me, having never climbed and was going to give it his first shot, he was probably more relieved than disappointed haha. We settled for a fun time in Sydney and I had scored a pair of crutches to aid my mobility. As you may imagine the rest of my time there, which was 5 days, was rather uneventful. Dave drove me to the airport and helped me get my bags sent off. Dave and Pav are coming to the U.S. this summer I can only hope to try and repay them the great favor and hospitality they gave me during my stay with them. The flight was needless to say pretty miserable, as it already is without a broken leg, but I will say going through customs, immigration, and getting to your next gate is quite a speedy process when you are escorted by an airport agent. All in all......landed on my 6th continent, covered over 2500 miles in my rental van, visited the better of two Australian states, caught up with some very good friends I've always wanted to visit in their country, did some world class climbing, hit the highest peak in Australia, failed again attempting to surf, made plenty of new friends, saw and ate a kangaroo, learned more funny Australian words and slang, broke one bone and most of my wallet, and had a pretty damn good time. Could never give enough thanks to Dave and Pav for making my stay what it was, you guys are AWESOME!