The Blues rise like a distant wave just west of Sydney. Sydney: the beach-blond antipodal sister of San Francisco, with a better port, a bigger gay-pride parade, cleaner streets, swimable seas, a week of sun for every day of rain, and bragging rights as this year's host of that time-honored TV spectacle, the Olympics.

Instead of spectating in September, I flew to Australia in June, three months before the crowds, to go out exploring with old, gnarly, unsponsored athletes whose sport won't ever be in the Olympics.

But June in Australia is winter. Canyoning is rarely done in winter. Indeed, I'd been told by an American canyoneer that it would be impossible to go canyoning in June: "You'll freeze to death." When I mentioned this to Rick in our first phone call, he said something that sounded like "aaarrrgh," then grumbled about "bloody whingey Americans." I liked him already.

The morning Rick turned up to drive me out to do our first canyon (Derek was busy that day), it was snowing in the Snowy Mountains, south of the capital, and newscasters were calling the weather "bittah cold." The city people were hiding under winter coats and wool scarves, and Rick was wearing exactly what you'd expect of a man whom one local canyoneer described as a "fokkin legend": ratty sweater, threadbare khaki shorts, flattened sneakers.

Rick is one of those old-school bush veterans who lives in shorts. Long pants are as much an anathema to him as they would be to a rugby player. So too a coat of any kind. "The best plan is to wear a woolen jumper next to the skin," he writes in Canyons Near Sydney. Same goes for the misery of heavy hiking boots: "We recommend Volley sandshoes [cheap canvas sneakers], as they are quite good on slippery rocks."

Brushing aside the beer cans in the back of his station wagon, I saw that his pack was no better: a potato-shaped lump suffering from such great age and abuse that all the buckles were gone and the once-shiny nylon fabric had been worn to fuzz. Crammed in with the rest of his gear and supplies was a dark, unidentifiable object.

"What's that?"

"Whut? Me wetsuit?"

Although still vaguely blue, it resembled some ragged animal skin, with the sleeves cut off at the biceps and legs cut off above the thighs. Most appalling, the crotch was ripped from belly button to tailbone.

"That keeps you warm?"

"Nah," said Rick sheepishly. "Caun't say that it does. But I brought me balaclava."

I took all this as a good sign. The older the gear, the better. People with new gear scare me: The scanty wear-and-tear of their equipage is too often indicative of the scantiness of their experience, which means you might not want to go on a tough hike with them, let alone descend into the orifices of the earth.

That day we did a canyon called Yileen, an Aborigine word for "dream." It had numerous rappels that dropped straight into icy ebony pools.

"There go me family jewels!" Rick would howl, and then rapidly half-wade, half-swim down the penumbral corridor and stumble up onto the next sandbank, laughing. I was wearing an intact wetsuit and it was still bone-chilling.

By the time we got to the final rap, a stunning 200-foot drop alongside a vaporous waterfall, our feet were wooden blocks and our fingers rubber bananas. It took an hour of hiking fast and hard uphill with packs to warm up. Rick declared the day "a beauty."

One good measure of an adventurer is how he acts when he is uncomfortable. Does he whine, keep quiet, or revel? The first is unforgivable, the second acceptable, the last always admirable.

That night we sat close to the woodstove in Rick's home at the edge of the Blue Mountains and drank hot tea, and after some prodding Rick told me about a 950-mile canoe trip he made down the Mackenzie River right after getting his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and marrying Jane (pronounced "yana"), his Danish wife. That somehow led to another adventure that he inexplicably referred to as "the fahs."

"Fahs?" I said.

"Yap. FARCE: Fantastical Australian Round-the-World Climbing Expedition. 1972. Six months. Drove a combi from Denmark to Australia, right through bloody Asia." He stretched his muscled legs, which, if it weren't for the lumps and scars and half-century tan, could belong to an Olympic runner. "Wanted to climb a mountain in Afghanistan, an' almost did."