Moving swiftly on....

Building climbing walls is not all that we do here in Sabah and we are often asked about that. What does a rope access company do?

Traditionally rope access company's are heavily involved in construction, deconstruction and maintenance or inspection. Big buildings, dirty overalls oggling passing women.

Not Ropeskills though, its far too hot to be out in the sun in the city when there are so many interesting jobs to be found.

For example; at the moment we are building Borneo's best canopy walk on the island of Gaya at the brand new 5-star Bunga Raya Resort.

An ambitious project to build a canopy walk that doesn't require much exertion from guests, so no ladders to climb or big steps. It also needs to be big and stable enough for couples to stroll along at sunset or sunrise to enjoy the forest and beach view without struggling to hold on the whole way.

Sabah only has a couple of canopy walks that have a deck more than a foot or so wide, one at Borneo Rainforest Lodge and the other at Maliau Basin. Curiously both constructed by the legendary Philipinno, Emiliano.

Once this stage is completed we will be adding to the facilities by building six ziplines into the surrounding forest for the more adventurous guests, we will keep you posted....

NEWS!

Just kidding....
There little else to say except that we are still waiting for the sports board to decide when the centre will open, in practical terms they have let the moment pass for us to capitalise on the facility being new and exciting.
To those of you who have been enquiring, I apologise for the delay, it really is out of our hands. Truth is that we cant wait much longer ourselves, it may be that we reach the limit of our resources to wait and step out of the management role.
In the meantime we are looking into some alternative possibilities, KK is ready for a climbing centre....watch this space.

More Delays

It is with a heavy heart that I report yet another delay in the opening of the climbing centre.
Maybe it will never open, after five months of waiting I am starting to doubt that it will be worth the effort. The reflection on us is hard to avoid yet we have been ready and waiting for ages.

Without launching into a rant about working with governments I shall simply let the silence say what it needs to......

GO!!!!!!

An incredible amount of time has passed since we finished installation of the Sabah Indoor Climbing Centre and we have been stood by waiting for the thumbs up to go ahead and open it. A lot has happened with us in the meantime, we have been to Australia to get our Level 3 certification in rope access, we have completed half of the Canopy walkway in Bunga Raya and re-rigged the National Service High ropes course at the Tamparuli camp. No-one could accuse us of letting the grass grow...

Any road up, insurance and paperwork dependent we aim to be open in the first or second week of January 2010, Woohooo as Homer Simpson would say. New Ropes, new shoes and toilets that actually flush, its a modern miracle.

So now its your turn, you have to come on down and give it a try, then tell us what you think and we can improve it because this is your climbing centre.

If you write to simon@fieldskills.com and tell me why you deserve a free climbing session I will be passing out some free passes for people to come and try it out.

Eds Big Pink Cave

The photo is coming I promise, a crap Sony camera is to blame. I am now convinced that they are manufactured to die within a year. Seems like a rubbish policy to me because I will never buy another Sony camera and I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know that they are shite.

Dont lets get distracted from the new cave, its quite a thing to behold I can tell you, you should drop by Likas and take a look. According to Ed it was meant to be purple but I am not sure that a purple cave would have been any better anyway.

Somehow the colour doesn't even diminish its class, what a great piece of wall-making and I for one am looking forward to getting a firm hand-hold in Eds pink cave and cranking on it......

Red Gecko (Blue Monkey)

A huge lurch forward has occurred since I wrote the last installment, my departure on a two-week road-trip seems to have happened during the ideal growth period. Ed and the boys have made monumental leaps.

1 - the lower half of wall 4 is now in place (Eat Blue Llama)

2 - the bouldering arch is almost complete and ready for painting

3 - all the strength tests are completed (thanks to the Climb Asia team, especially Halil).

4 - the Cave subframe is almost complete, cladding begins on monday

Not bad for a ten-day stretch, powered by lemonade I suspect.

As we approach completion we are thinking about the management and staffing of the place when it opens to the great unwashed. Good staff are being sought.

The gear and clothing outlet is to be called Red Gecko with the cafe to possibly be called Blue Monkey, those who inspired this know precisely who they are....

Ed thinks he will take a holiday once the project is complete, considering his job consists of doing all his favourite things at the same time I fail to understand what he could do on holiday that could be better.

A new project looms on the horizon also, one that will require us to purchase a new outboard motor for my boat in order to get to and from the project site (on an island), its expensive but alas, necessary hmmmmm.

Our experience of the the last island project should have taught us that neither Ed nor Naz can be allowed to drive the boat, land lubbers the both of them.

Lemons

....for making lemonade.

If thats what you have, thats what you do, apparently.

Its a commonly held belief that you can do anything if you put your mind to it, I have my doubts that Formula One is going to be prepared to let me have a stab at the world championship next year and however hard I put my mind to it the fact that I am, er, several years older than the current racers and slightly heavier than I should be would probably make me an outside chancer, even if I had the money of Roman Abramovitch or the chap that just bought Man City (theres a wally if ever there was one) I would stake everything I own on not getting a sniff.

On the other hand, if you have lemons you probably stand a good chance of becoming a lemonade maker, maybe more so than a Formula One driver in fact.

My point is that while we are in the throes of building a climbing wall it is still a wonder for us to stand back and admire our work, not in a particularly smug way, more like getting the job done and enjoying the way it looks.

We are climbers and project managers so building a climbing wall is like the lemon man making lemonade, its the natural thing to do and thats why it is a pleasure for us.

These words of wisdom issued forth from Edward today as we were hauling up the third big wall, the arete in fact. At the time they only served to make me thirsty but then these things sometimes take a considerable time for me to process.

As you can see from the photo its pretty nice, the colouring is different from the last one and the piece that fits between them is going to blend the two shades together, we hope.

Four weeks to go, the clock is ticking but the team continues to work hard, eat messy burgers and nurture a wholly unhealthy sense of humour.