It was freezing and dark in the tent when I woke. My threeseason sleeping bag wasn’t holding enough heat in the Australian winter night, which had turned out to be much colder than I’d planned for. I wedged my fingers under my arms and tried not to think about the piss I had to take, concentrating fruitlessly on sleep. Ten minutes later, I unzipped my thin down cocoon and crawled out into the windless dark.

The moon was shockingly bright, pouring light onto a fi eld of scrubby bushes. Looking up, I could see the lunar surface as clearly as a cliff face across a valley — pale shadows outlined extraterrestrial valleys and asteroid impact craters. Around me in the Grampians’ Stapylton Campground, every site was vacant. I guessed I was the only human for miles. It was the perfect thing for the escapist in me, which had had enough of people jabbering, city lights blotting out the stars, the dull rhythms of the daily grind. Of course, I was also gripped by a primal fear buzzing in my reptilian brain, the vague image of a predator crouched in the dark. But nothing stirred, and I returned to my tent to chase after a halting sleep.

The next morning, I woke to what I’d come to call a Grampians’ alarm clock, a black-and-white bird known as the laughing kookaburra that sounds like a cross between a monkey and a ray gun set to vaporize. Just outside my tent fl ap, a miniature kangaroo-like creature known as a wallaby greeted me, munching grass and loitering for a handout. In my head I thought, “No food for you, pal,” feeling like somehow we’d communicated. I hadn’t spoken a word in days. I had some coffee and cereal at the wooden bench by my campsite, stashed my food, and wandered off alone with a crashpad, chalk bag, and rock shoes, not looking for anything in particular. Away from the gyms and the posses and the hype, the need to do had given way to the pleasure of being.

The climbing at the Gramps is among the best anywhere — the tiger-striped Taipan Wall, the cavernous Hollow Mountain Cave, immaculate orange sandstone routes and blocs at every turn. But I didn’t fly half way around the world just for the rock; the rock was just a very good excuse. I’d come for something bigger — new wildlife, a sky full of new constellations, and new people. I got it all . . . plus the rocks.

After three or four days at Stapylton, climbers from Australia, Austria, Canada, France, and the United States began to roll into the campsite. We shared hard-earned tricks, like using a certain Aussie cookie as a straw to drink hot coffee (the cookie melts into chocolate sludge as you slurp), and talked about the climbing back home. Everyone had a crag that was, “So great, you have to come climbing!” Emails were exchanged. I’ve even seen some of the people I met there again.

Travel and a borderless community are among climbing’s greatest attributes. For whatever reason, climbing breeds a powerful sense of shared identity — a climber is a climber the world over. Hell, you can couchsurf your way through a climbing trip almost anywhere (just expect to repay the favor at some point). I’ll never forget the hospitality of the Italian guy I met via an online bouldering forum and who gave me a tour of his local area, town, and culture, plus a place to crash. A night out drinking in Sienna and dinner with a table of friendly locals in a 500-year-old apartment building? Let’s just say it’s not the kind of experience you get with a tour package, or as the credit card commercials say: “Priceless.”

So if you’ve been considering a trip, maybe to somewhere far fl ung (like New Zealand or Greece — see p.40 and p.58, respectively), take this Starting Hold as an excuse to stop considering and go. Make it work. There’ll be epics — certainly there’ll be epics — but epics are the spice of life, and new experiences in new places are the meat. Or something. —;Justin Roth

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