Mt. Wellington

We've moved from the dock at the yacht club out to a mooring.  This is the view we wake up with - the southern suburbs of Hobart, with Mt. Wellington behind.

Today Nick, one of our Hobart doppelgangers, showed us around up on Mt. Wellington. Nick and Marls are our dopplegangers because they just crossed the Pacific on a Crealock 37, they are expecting their first child a week before Alisa is due, and Marls is a marine biologist. We think they are the good kind of dopplegangers, though, not the bad.

We walked up to the Organ Pipes, the dolerite cliffs at the top of Wellington.  The trail started as a steep scramble, which Elias did much of under his own power.  "I've never been rock climbing before!" he said as this picture was taken.

Elias enjoying the fruit of his efforts.  We had brought along the climbing gear, and while Alisa and E. had a hike and a play in a spring and a snack, Nick kindly hauled me up a two-pitch climb called Blue Meridan.  I was glad that Alisa and Elias weren't watching from below, as I grovelled my way up both pitches, and Alisa would have had to answer endless questions along the lines of, "Why is Daddy falling?"

As far as I can recall, this was my first climb since the boreal spring of 2000!  Time was when mountain climbing was mostly all I wanted to do, but now I mostly want to do other things.  Great fun to get out, though, and great to jump right onto a two-pitch climb.  And now, I don't have to worry about crossing rock climbing off the must-do list before we leave Tasmania.