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Buffalo Aidfest November 2014. 9-Sep-2015 At 8:56:00 PM phillipivan

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On 22/01/2015 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>
>Meanwhile, Damo Milo reccy’d the Gorge area for future adventures, then
>set his portaledge a couple of metres below Wilkinson Ledge adjacent around
>the corner from the Lord Gumtree final pitches of Ozy Direct, in order
>to ambush PI & Scott when they appeared later that evening.
>
>Stop and consider that kind of humour for a moment...
>
>Image you are 16 hours into a long multipitch climb, and starting to feel
>fatigued.
>It is pitch black dark, and raining.
>You have one pitch to go before calling it done, but you are revelling
>in the solitude of your surroundings as they are in a lonely outrageously
>exposed location removed from the trappings of civilisation.
>You are contemplating your aloneness at this penultimate belay while your
>partner is ascend-cleaning the pitch below to join you.
>~> and then a gravelly voice whispers in your ear-
>

Actually it was considerably weirder than all that. On the penultimate pitch, I started to smell tobacco smoke. Which became unmistakable by the time I was at the belay below the slot. However being unable to reconcile the smell with my location, I started to believe it was some weird combination of the rain, the grass and organic matter in the cracks, and my fatigue. Some kind of olfactory hallucination. It was only later when I heard Damo speak that I realised that the tobacco that I smelt was in fact just that.