Eleanor the Professional: What will this be? Part two of Buttebox Canyon: THE CLIMB

What will my blog be? I was quite surprised by the reception of my first post - an introductory post. So, thank you to those people in Russia and America who have viewed my blog! And of course to those in Australia.

So, this makes me think to myself - what will my blog be? Will my blog be one of those blogs that only have one or two entries and then fizzel out when the writer doesn't get around to writing another? I don't want it to be. In fact, I am so touched by the views of my blog that I have decided to write another one. And who knows? Maybe I'll write this for years; you'll be looking at my blog in a year's time to see where I started at. Well, this is where I am starting at: here, now.

Stuck With It Now's blog "Mt Hay Canyon (Butterbox) - stuck in the middle" just
 left us at the end of a massive abseil down a massive waterfall. Remember? We'd just abseiled halfway down to a rock wedged between the narrow walls of the Canyon, gotten our rope stuck and continued down to the ground, blind to what lay below us and unsure that the rope would see us to the bottom. 

And then we were out, and as Stuck With It Now said, there were still a number of abseils and a rock climb before we got out of the Butterbox Canyon.

So this was the bottom of the massive abseil (a picture you've already seen).

When we turned around and swam a little bit, this was the view that we saw:

As you can see, we had some distance to drop. This, we jumped:

From this point, we emerged from the water, leaving the narrow, wedged walls behind us. This is how happy we were with ourselves of our achievements, unknowing of course of the challenges we had ahead.

Now: onto the havoc ahead.

We took the chance of the warm sun to idle a little and eat some dried mango(the food of champions). Then, it was time to walk down the river.

Yep, that's right folks, we walked down the river. Now, there aren't any photos of this bit, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Imagine the material of the Canyon - rock, rock and more rock - in smaller bits, jagged and piled up. These were our stepping stones down the river. Now, as some of you might be thinking, if we start at any one point and abseil/ climb down a river, in order to get back to the said point, one must then climb up the distance they climbed down.

And this is (not quite) exactly what we had to do:

So after a little hour or so of walking down the river rocks, we had to walk up a great big hill (this great big hill is not quite displayed in my picture, but to give you an idea, the top of the great big hill is marked with an great big X).

At this point, Stuck with it Now's two older brothers decided that we were running out of time until sunset (to explain, I was on a Canyoning trip with my boyfriend (who I'm Stuck With Now) and his two older brothers). More information: we had two options to get up, out and back to the car. The first option was about a 10 kilometre walk (that would take longer than the amount of sun light hours that we had left) or an epic climb up an epic hill (even further than the marked X) and a level 10 rock climb. 

So, back to the story, Brothers A and D run off to set up the rock climb, as this was the decided plan of action. We were going to attempt the rock climb and, if we couldn't do it, we'd walk the 10k. 

Stuck With it Now and I take the epic climb to the ledge (refer to the diagram) which was where we were going to start our level 10 rock climb. At the top of the epic climb, a little fatigued and awkward from crouching under a rock, I stumble a little bit. I stumple close, really quite close, to the edge of the ledge. A little perturbed, I take a look down. Maaaaaan, that is a steep drop. We (did not at all) calculate it to be 1,000m drop (so my diagram is out of scale). This was a view of the drop:

So, like I say, it was quite a drop. 

And like I say, I sort of stumbled before anyone saw.  This is important, for comic effect. 

Anyway, we are now on the ledge from which we were going to attempt a level 10 rock climb (refer to diagram). 

I have never rocked climbed a day in my life. 

With ropes that weren't quite rock climbing ropes (but abseiling ropes) and, on my part, without much, alright any, training, me and my group of Stuck With it Now and Brothers A and D begin our climb with this as our consequence.

And it was then that I realised that Stuck With it Now was perhaps a little bit scared of heights. It all began with a tree. Let me show you a picture of this tree:

Now, do you remember the little stumble I had earlier? Well, I stumbled before I realised that there was such a great height to fall off. And because of this little stumble, I made sure I was sure footed and had a sturdy grip on something. So I checked the hold of this tree, shook it a little bit, made sure it would hold my weight, and then tentively leaned over to take a look at that amazing height. A yell makes me almost fall off. 

"ELEANOR! STOP IT! YOU'RE ABOUT TO FALL!" 

Seriously, I thought I was about to have a heart attack. All of a sudden, Stuck With it Now was telling me off, and saving my life and keeping me from the terrible threat of falling. Rather than pointing out that I was completely fine and a big kid who can ensure for herself that she wont fall, I realised a little bit of stress in my lovely's face, so I sat in the corner to settle him down. 

It was at this point that I thought that maybe Brothers A and D were also perhaps a little afraid of heights. I mean, it was a long way down, but we weren't going to fall, right? Brothers A and D quickly began telling me off. 

Oh, I wish you were there. Words can't explain the natural beauty of the environment we were in. All around me, there were views people don't see in their entire lives. 

And, I was about to rock climb for the first time in my life, with a backdrop of the beautiful Blue Mountains, were 1 metre to my left there was at least a 1,000m drop. Psychologically, this was more than a little bit off-putting. 

So, I lied. Rather than saying, I've never rocked climbed a day in my life, I said: "This climb isn't even that bad, I used to do this kind of thing all the time in my childhood". 

"Oh, phew" Stuck With it Now says. Though he later tells me he suspected a lie, he chose to believe it in the moment. And it was with this little lie that perhaps we all believed we could all do it. 