Rock Magazine

A holiday of climbing in Thailand is brilliant. Beach side crags with climbing off the sand or out of the water, refuelling with exquisite Thai culinary delights and re-hydrating with your choice of cold beer or hot whisky, and good routes (roots for lucky singles who snaffle the prized holiday romance).

That said, there is a strangely poetic incongruence that sees the environment so convivial to short-term holiday bliss also prove caustic to long-term stays, metallurgically speaking. Not that you couldn’t set up shop on the beach for an extended stint, unless of course you were a bolt. Paradise comes with a price and in this instance it is the corrosive combination of humidity, salt, heat, monsoon conditions and limestone. Bolts seem to fall apart faster than Post-WWII Italian ruling coalitions.

In the search to combat the potentially deathy deterioration of bolts, the local climbing community have cycled through rings and expansions, stainless and galvanised and all manner of glues before settling on titanium. But that extra lifespan comes at a cost, so King et al are donating all the cash generated from the 7th edition directly to rebolting. The equation is simple; your purchased guide is worth one-and-half shiny titanium bolts. Buy the guide and not only do you get the latest low down on the state of a route’s bolts – crucial information – you also ensure their ongoing fixeruperering. Karma, or something.

To the guide, via a reflection on holidays. Holidays are about happy snaps, aren’t they? King knows this and helpfully includes a list of the most photogenic routes and the times of year and day that are most conducive to you looking at your prettiest for the topless photos of you sending that will go up on Facebook. This is obviously a fine addition.

As for the general stuff, the topos are good, maps get you where you’re going though it would be hard to get lost, a guide to a cliff’s relations to the tracking of the sun helps you to plan your days and a language guide makes it easy to fumble through the basics, but, as stated above, best of all it tells you what’s been rebolted and when.

The guide is available from Mountain Equipment in Kent St, Sydney.

Simon Madden