First Mountaineering Club Trip

Spending time with people in the outdoors forms bonds extremely quickly. This past weekend, I was lucky enough to have one of those experiences on the mountaineering club trip to the Grampians National Park. I met and became close to so many new people over the two days we spent camping, hiking and climbing. Jules, Lauren, and Chris are my new close friends from the mountaineering club.

It helps that the Grampians is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I've ever been. In the states, any time I have been camping, it has mostly been through pure forest. In Australia, there are so many rocks, that you're basically hiking up boulders and climbing around trees the whole time. If you don't know this about me, I love to climb. This past weekend I was able to climb walls, boulders, mountains and trees. I was in heaven.

Camping was really fun. When our group of around forty-five people showed up on Friday at midnight, it was almost as if a new colony had appeared in the middle of the night. Saturday during the early morning, it started pouring rain. Fortunately, even though we practically had our tent situated on a river, the tent stood up to the challenge and stayed completely dry. It was forecast to rain throughout the whole weekend, but we only got a few light showers over the next two days, so we were able to get some really good climbing in.

The rock climbing here is pretty much a million times better than any climbing I've done in the states. The sandstone makes great handholds, and there is good bouldering anywhere you look. My fingers were completely raw by the end of the trip. My friend Chris is really into climbing, and we went bouldering today near his house. They have a free artificial bouldering wall underneath a bridge in the city right next to a bike trail. It is awesome!

I will be doing a lot more camping, climbing and hiking in the future. I love it, and I can't believe I haven't done more. This next weekend, I am going camping, kayaking, and bushwalking in Otways National Park. We'll see how that goes! The water is colddddd.

Here, once again, is a link to some pictures:
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=277623225/a=53093359_53093359/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish