4 April 2007
Group 1: Climbing at Wine Bottle/Cooking School
Group 2: Cycling and dinner at Café China
Our group was to head out to Little Frog for climbing but the weather was too bad. When the guides went out to set up the topes they found the crag damp and the approach too muddy. After a couple of splash-downs they decided that a change of venue was needed and so we were redirected to a huge crag called Wine Bottle.
Just across the fields from Wine Bottle is a huge cave – a major tourist attraction due to the large numbers of butterflies that fly out of its mouth in hordes, or whatever the collective noun is for a lot of butterflies. A flutter, maybe.
We got the girls to rope up and climb first today. On the previous day’s climbing the boys had been so enthusiastic that they had pushed their way forward and some of the girls hadn’t had enough chance to climb.
Today’s climbing was much more relaxed. Xiao Sai gave a talk on climbing ethics before we started. We wanted the students to rely on the rope only for safety, not as aid to climbing the routes. In free climbing the aim is to get from the start of the route to the top without putting your weight on the rope or pulling on anything other than the rock you are supposed to be climbing. It is hard to get this across to students when they first start climbing.
I explained some climbing terms to students.
Free climbing – to climb without using the rope or protection for aid and assistance. Equipment is used for safety and lowering off or abseiling only.
Soloing – free climbing without a rope. Falling off is not advised; it can give a new meaning to terminal velocity.
Sport climbing – climbing on rock that has been ‘bolted’. “Hangers” that can be “clipped” with a karabiner are attached to the rock permanently with expansion bolts. Lead climbers clip the rope into these as they climb up the route. This gives them protection – if they fall the drop the distance to their last clip plus the same distance below the clip plus a bit more for stretch etc. This stops the climber hitting the ground. Usually.
Top roping – is climbing when the rope is above your head. It is held by a “belayer” at the top of the climb. If the climber falls, he will only fall inches or a few feet at most.
Bottom roping – this is like top roping – in other words very safe – but the belayer stands on the ground. The rope loops up to the top of the climb and then back down to the climber. This is the style of climbing that we were doing with the students.
Traditional or Trad Climbing – in this version of free climbing the lead climber places “protection” in the rock as he climbs up. The “second” climber then follows and strips this protection out.
The routes we climbed today weren’t quite as hard as those at Low Hill and so all achieved a great deal of success.
Following the climb we went to a cooking school. This was set up by Pam, an Australian chef. She saw that nobody was teaching cooking at Yangshuo and so decided to do the job herself, converting an old farm house and its outbuildings into a kitchens and dining areas.
We made four dishes – steamed chicken with red Chinese dates and wolf berries, ginger and ginseng; pork egg rolls; pork with vegetables and pak choi. At this point we were all rather tired and cold, so it is remarkable that we were all able to pay attention to the demonstrations and then cook the dishes.
I am not sure whether the dishes we made were representative of the local cuisine, but the flavours and presentation were very good. We used huge quantities of oil and garlic (5 or 6 cloves in dishes to be consumed by one person!). My fried eggplant was rather black. I think that the correct term is caramelized.
The cooking school has two dining areas – an open area without heating and a small room with a wood burning stove. Everybody tried to cram into the warmer room. There was a guitar in the corner and William immediately picked it up, beginning an impromptu ceilidh. Connie, Will, Max and Verity all played or sang. It was a great end to the day.
