Written by: Noah Hellen

Trip attendees:

• Jesslin Ho
• Zheran Zhang
• Sophia Lee
• Mona Xia
• Alexander Brough
• Lauren Mason
• Suheera Doni
• Toren Dofher
• Stelios Kotsovolis
• Eugene Bevilacqua
• Seamus Kelly
• Elaine (Yi) Gao
• Jasmin Hills
• Simon Daubner
• Michele Zordan
• Amelia Oberholzer
• Noah Hellen
• Matthew Shields
• Jeremy Ghinn
• Giovanni

Day 1

The day started with a 6am wake up. You see, as it currently stands, the only accommodation we can find in Portland is the Bunkhouse – which is quite expensive. So, we can only afford to stay there for one night. As such, we must travel down to Portland on the Saturday morning, unlike other trips where we travel on the Friday evening.

But, I digress. We were all quite tired. Matthew, again the saving grace of the club, who had organised the entire trip, as well as bought all the food and such himself (!!!!!). There were a few drop-outs the morning of, who we do not talk to to this day because of their failure to wake up early, but more or less, everyone had arrived at the designated time.

I (Noah, the guy writing this) was driving a Ford Puma Zipcar, and because of the dropouts, only carried one late passenger (Seamus). Actually wait, maybe Zheran joined as well? Yeah he did.

Anyways, we all set off towards Portland. My car stopped off at a service station at the midway point. I picked up some ICMC-funded tea and breakfast from Greggs. It was tasty.

Our endpoint was the Church Ope car park, which has free parking (!!!!!), so we could head to our crag of the day – The Cuttings.

We all arrived at similar times. The minibus, driven by Matthew, had once again (see the Wye Valley post) beaten the cars there despite being in the slower minibus. Another hero of the trip was Lauren Mason, who for no reason apart from pure selflessness, had offered to use her car for the weekend.

So, we had all arrived. It was a beautiful day in the microclimate of Portland. We briskly headed off to the crag and split up in our duos and trios.

I myself paired up with the novices Eugene Baklava (I know that’s not your name but it is close enough and kinda (not really) funny) and Zheran Zhang to do their first sport climbs outdoors (maybe?). Or, at the very least, it would be their first times cleaning an anchor.

My trio and I marched down to the easiest section of the crag to practise the sport climbing skills. Alex Brough and Jasmine Hills were also nearby and wanting to learn some skills. So, we set up on some easy routes and started climbing. Or did we? Five minutes go by and Alex has only made it to the second clip. Eugene can’t even make it to the first clip. I had made sure we were at the correct section right? I ran down to the previous section of the crag and looked again at Rockfax. Fuck. Ok maybe I had made a mistake. Maybe I had sent some novices up some 7a climbs for their first outdoor experience. Who’s to know, really?

Anyway, we go to the correct section and do some climbs. It was good. They learnt a lot. We have lunch and I switch targets to help Jesslin Ho learn some sport skills. She jumps on a climb and starts sending. It is getting dark by this point but she is making good progress. Zheran is on the belay. She gets to the crux. Will she get past? She takes a small fall. No biggie. She takes another. She’s a fighter. She goes quite far up, nearly at the next draw but can’t hold on. She falls. It happened in slow motion. She falls like four metres, turns upside down – it was very dramatic. But, she wasn’t shaken??? She continues.

But, at this point she was tired and wanted to come down. I headed up to finish the route. It was a 5a, how hard could it be? It got up to the crux section full of hope. What the fuck? I couldn’t do it. I looked for other ways, even traversing to the next route across. Anyways, somehow I made it, with a bit of luck, before it was dark.

I headed down. Everyone had a good day of climbing. That’s that.

We drive on to Tesco to pick up some drinks and more food, and then on to the Bunkhouse. Everyone is in full spirits. The Bunkhouse is a very lovely place, very well-kept – I can see why we keep on returning.

We filter into the dorms to drop off our bags and such. The Spaghetti man (Jeremy Ghinn) had taken a hiatus from making his special Bolognese. So, as is a recurring theme of these trips, Matthew Shields came to the rescue to cook us up some chicken katsu curry. He got some help for cooking the meal, and everyone was in high spirits.

While they were doing this, Jesslin and I were scheming up some entertainment for the evening. We headed down to the Tesco once more, firstly to pick up some milk for the overnight oats, but also to pick up some knick-knacks for the evening.

We decided that the games we would play would be to split everyone up into four teams and have them compete in little challenges. The second challenge required wasabi, so we picked that up.

We headed back and enjoyed some scrumptious dinner.

There was a culturally insensitive incident which I feel like I should report on for DEI matters. While I was helping with washing up, bearing in mind that we had loooooots of plates and not much time to clean them up, I had created a little tub of water in the sink with soap (like my mama taught me) to wash the plates more efficiently. I gave them a scrub in the water and put them on the drying rack.

But oooooooooh the shit storm I received for this. Everyone came at me like a pack of locusts, saying ‘YOU HAVE TO CLEAN ALL THE SOAP OFF THE DISHES BEFORE DRYING’. I was taken aback. At no point in my life had a group of people insulted my culture (aka what I had been doing for years at my home) so viciously. Being the bigger man, I took a step back and let Stelios wash the dishes. But there were bigger matters to deal with…

Jesslin and I had already planned the evening but started making our second challenge with the wasabi…

Game time. Jesslin and I walk into the lounge to announce the evening activities. Btw most of these games were just off TikTok.

First game. This was low-key a flop. Each group had to get in a circle, close their eyes, and randomly grab the hands of someone else. Then, they had to unwind themselves. Everyone took like 4 seconds. It was too easy.

Next game. THE WASABI ONE. Jesslin and I, for each group of 5, had filled four small morsels of sandwich with Biscoff and one with wasabi. Each group had to come up and eat them. The other groups had to guess who had wasabi. It was very fun. Wasabi sucks.

Next game (final game?). One person from each group came up. This is the imposter word game. I would give three of them the same word separately, and one a different (but related) word. None of them knew if they had the imposter word. They had to each say something about the word, either vague or precise, and at the end of three rounds of words, each person had to guess who they thought the imposter was. It was very fun as well.

Nighty night.

Day 2

We woke up relatively early again to catch the morning sunlight. The overnight oats had been prepped. Everyone was happy. Except Mona. It took like 20 minutes of constant berating and loud music to get her out of bed smh.

Once we were all full, we headed off to the crag of the day – Battleship Back Cliff. The approach low-key kinda sucks, but we managed it.

Everyone went in their pairs and trios and headed off for the day. Myself, Stelios, and Amelia went in a trio and climbed some fun routes.

There’s not much to say really. The weather was amazing, except pretty cold, and the scenery beautiful.

Here are some pictures.

Well, this is one thing to say…

Amelia Oberholzer, the self-proclaimed queen of climbing (her words not mine), on her last climb (nearly dark) wanted to give a 6a, that even the steeliest climbers in our club kind of found hard, a go on lead.

She got so far to the top. We were all very impressed. She was one clip away from the anchor. NOOOOOOOOO. She can’t make it. She is too tired. She comes down. But there are a bunch of draws left in the wall? Who will rescue them? None other than yours truly. My hands were tired. I was done climbing. But, I knew what needed to be done. I got to the crux where she bailed, and yep it’s fuckin tricky and also quite run out so is scary. But, because I have long arms, I extended as much as possible and was trying to clip for like 2 minutes no joke, at the dismay of my belayer Stelios, and managed to get it. Crisis averted, all good in the hood.

Everyone packs up for the day, everyone was happy, we head home.

We stop off at the service station for the traditional ‘Three stars and a wish’ and head home.