I came down with a cold Thurday night and was having Fri off from work when what should arrive in the post but the new guide. I instantly was distracted from feeling miserably sorry for myself for the next couple of hours. Getting Stuart Williams to write the history I feel was the best possible choice of candidate, bridging eras with insight as well as avoiding the temptation to be overly expansive of his own achievements and milieu at the expense of earlier or later ones. I concur with Stuart that if one were to choose a single climber who exemplified the nature of Moonarie climbing then that would be the late Col Reece.
He also wonders if Mike James or I had much inkling of what we were getting into when setting of new routing with Col. Usually it’d be just an arete, corner or wall left or right of something else so you’d have an inkling. Mike probably wasn’t too fazed as he’d done a NZ alpine season or two and once Mike and I (as a 17yr old relative newby) when our pre-arranged ride to Araps hadn’t turned up at the uni footbridge by 7pm one Fri night, Mike simply announced that he’d catch a bus out to Glen Osmond and start hitching. In my case Col had scared me enough on my first days just at Norton Summit and the sea-cliffs so I was inured by the time I started doing stuff at Moonarie with him. He only ever once went hugely off route with me when after the first couple of pitches of Casablanca 19 went out past the wall right of Spartan. Variant starts and finishes were a regular occurrence though. With Col initially and later Kim I was more concerned about not acquitting myself dishonourably (ie not being a poopy pants) and on some of their scarier leads providing a reassuring, positive line of patter while belaying which can make all the difference. I imagine some of Col’s less regular ones probably had some wild times partnering on new routes with him. His then recent Yosemite experience meant he was a safe anchor builder, efficient and he encouraged me to swap leads on appropriately graded pitches of multi-pitch routes. Later I repaid some of that mentoring for instance when, once i’d commenced spending long periods at Araps in the late 70’s, although Col was of the belief that grade 24s were beyond him I decided that one of the Castle Crag ones (Warmonger I believe), would suit his style and despite protestations, he eventually relented and got it after several goes within an hour or so for his first repeat at the grade.
Back to the guide, I also like how as in the Araps guide, classic descriptive snippets have been retained from earlier guides in some of the route descriptions. Well done editors and myriad contributors. Better than I dared hoped for.