Far from our usual adventures, at the end of 2013 we decided to take on perhaps the biggest challenge of our lives. We felt it was about time that the Australian Climbing Festival needed to be revived. The last one was run in 2007 by Adam and Claire Donaghue, and it was an impressive, inspirational festival. So much so that we were inspired to do a trip to Yosemite and we booked tickets right after the 2007 festival. After years of waiting for ’someone’ to run another festival we knew the only way to make it happen was to do it ourselves.
It was a lot of work for the two of us and we barely did anything else for about a year - note the distinct lack of climbing adventures in 2014? We had presentations from climbers Hazel Findlay, Andy Kirkpatrick, Cedar Wright, Paul Pritchard, Jim Duff, Tim Macartney-Snape, Mike Law, Andrew Lock and Greg Mortimer to name just a few. Some highlights of the three day festival on 17-19 October 2014, can be viewed here, and the ACF website is at www.australianclimbingfestival.com.au
With some of the festival mob. From left: Gemma Woldendorp, Hazel Findlay, Cedar Wright, Nina Gallo, Natasha Sebire, Simon Mentz (seated) Andy Kirkpatrick (behind), Paul Pritchard, Damien Gildea