A Review of New Zealand Rock Climbing

I have now had the privilege to have sampled a collection of some of New Zealand's finest rock. Michelle and I have climbed at Mt.Maunganui, Paynes Ford, Pohara, Castle Hill and Hospital Flats (Wanaka) which have all been a very unique but feature a common theme of technique, adventure and humility.

Most of the rock we have climbed on has been very technical and powerful. Being physically strong and thoughtless can leave one very frustrated. There has been lot's of technical footwork, mantles, smearing on rounded edges and delicate movement (the mantles are not limited to bouldering as well). After a good handful of climbing days throughout New Zealand I've only once had a sore upper body.

Cleaning draws off one of many awesome climbs at Mt.Maunganui.

The rock has been a combination of all three rock types igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. Mt.Maunganui featured a really nice igneous rock called rhyolite that was highly featured with pockets, jugs and ample texture for confident smearing. It was a pretty cool experience to be able to climb on the exterior of an extinct volcanic cone. This climbing area has ample atmosphere and with most the routes being between 10-15 meters it allows one to climb with more of a bouldering headspace.

At Paynes Ford, Pohara and Castle Hill it felt nice and familiar, limestone. Although, the erosion and weathering on the rock at Paynes and Pohara have created a series of really interesting ridges and horn features that were really interesting, but overall it had the same texture and confidence inspiring grip that I'm used to back in the Canadian Rockies. The only limestone choss we came across was at Pohara, which is likely due to the proximity to the Sea. I can only speculate that the salt water plays a huge roll in the exfoliation of the rock.

Stairway of the Gods, Pohara

The climbing in Wanaka is metamorphic and offered a totally different experience. The rock there is called Schist. It has a similar feel to quartzite but visually shares a similar graininess to that of wood. Unlike the rhyolite at Maunganui, and the limestone at Paynes the rock at Wanaka didn't have the same obvious holds and required a keen eye to find the right little incut holds or chunky edges. Also when in the blazing hot sun the rock became quite slick and extra tricky.

On the Tombstone at Hosptial Flat in Wanaka

Castle Hill's limestone was unlike any limestone I've ever climbed on. The boulders at Castle Hill are amazing, beautiful, and awesome but, most of the boulders are notoriously under featured and somewhat slick. The boulders are actually a very soft limestone and the exterior of the rocks feature a coating similar to that of stalactite in a cave. The slickness of the rock is partly due to the weathering and erosion of the limestone and the wear and tear of climbers.  A lot of the features in Castle Hill are sloppy huecos, scoops and blunt arretes (corners).  Positive features are rare at Castle Hill and problems that do have positive holds are mostly polished by the thousands of international climbers like ourselves who don't have the time or patience to learn how to climb highly technical featureless rock. As noted in the guide book most international climbers are shut down hard on what appear to be easy problems. The hardest problem I managed to climb was Quake V4, which I flashed. However, there were plenty of humbling problems that required much more effort to gain the topout.  

Super tricky footwork on Beautiful Edges V4

The yellow streak reveals the soft inner limestone

Sloppy Castle Hill scoops

The best route at Coronet Crag

The only climbing we managed to do around Queenstown is at the Coronet Crag. Although the rock was exactly the same type of rock in Wanaka it was surprisingly loose and sandy. It was well featured though and reminded me of climbing on soft sand stone. Overall itwas really good, well protected and enjoyable. In the 2 days we were there we climbed over 9 routes.

New Zealanders are also quite bold and adventurous in terms of climbing. Most routes are run out by Canadian Rockies standards. Run out is a term used to describe a route where there is large distances between points of protection (bolts or trad gear).  I've seen plenty of routes around 15-20 meters long with 2,3, or maybe 4 bolts (if you're lucky) and the first bolt being very high up. In other climbing areas 5-6 bolts would be pretty standard for this length of route.


 I've also noticed that some routes become much more run out between the last bolt and the anchor of routes as to say 'You have plenty of bolts below you and you probably won't hit the ground'. Most of the routes are 'safe' as in you won't smoke the ground but you will be going for a ride where your rope will be flossing the air for a little bit.

On one of the easier routes at Paynes. Note the height of the first bolt.

I distinctly remember freaking out climbing a route called Blockbuster rated 19 which in YDS is about 5.10a/b and was 20 meters tall with 3 bolts. On top rope or in a gym this difficulty would be a nice easy warm up, but with the risk of taking big gnarly falls it requires a certain level of calmness and precision that far surpasses the physical difficulty. The first attempt I made at the route I climbed up to the second bolt, took a good long breather and treaded slowly up to the crux and totally wimped out and needed to down climb and try it again. I went up to the crux again to try to find a different sequence but came to a realization that I would need to make a semi-dynamic move to a edge (that could be sloppy) right below the 3 bolt and risking a 12+meter fall. I down climbed to the second bolt and got lowered down. I chilled out and got back up and committed to the move and the edge was beautiful and after I stuck the move I gained enough confidence to blitz to the top. If this exact same route had 6-7 bolts this wouldn't have been even a noteworthy route, but due to the potential risk of flying through the air it made it much more engaging and rewarding.


First bolt on Blockbuster

New Zealand climbing is very humbling and I'm super stoked that I've had an opportunity to sample a good handful of classic routes and boulder problems. If I had to go home tomorrow I'd feel like I've had a great climbing experience. That being said though, I'd love to make another trip to Paynes Ford and Pohara again.

Sore fingers, swimming pools and watching out for KISS

Wednesday

Wednesday morning we headed back to the Turtle boulder and I tried Spring Board again. It was definitely a lot harder than I anticipated due to my poor foot work. I will have to return another time for a send!

Turtle boulder, Cherry Garcia V2/3

Turtle Boulder

Dave was working on a few problems on the back of the Turtle boulder including Monkey Wrench V7
and Cherry Garcia V2/3.

Climbing a fun V1/2, Heart and Sole left.

Some fancy foot work

After a short 3 hour detour there, we headed back to the Kraft boulders to try a few things. Dave did Heart and Sole, V5 and Sarah sent Sorange V3 after conquering her fear of heights and topping out. It was EPIC.  Dave sent a V5 called Heart and Sole. Unfortunately, it was a high gravity day for me and I wasn't able to get any problems.

Sorange V3

Heart and Sole V5

We headed back in the early afternoon for some quick pool time and headed to see Penn and Teller at the Rio..it was Rio-l good! They are amazing at what they do! I highly recommend going to see them next time you are in Vegas!

Thursday

We woke up feeling quite sluggish and spent.  This was our only day sport climbing. We headed to the Wake Up wall at the Third Pullout with Sarah, Jeff and Kory. My warm-up was a Mic's Master, 10d onsight on top rope. It feels good to finally be able to climb harder routes! Afterwards, I worked on a similar 11a, Just Shut up and Climb right beside it.  Dave meanwhile was climbing some crimpy Native Son, 11c and Good Mourning, 11b. He even hopped on a 12a called pain check.  It was a short day, but I am definitely seeing progress in my climbing. My training is starting to pay off!

Dave on a 12a. I can't remember the name.

Soaking up the sun on the crash pad Dave brought along with us.

Dave brought the crashpad and the ladies lounged on it all day in the sun.  We headed back to the hotel and napped before heading to  dinner at a Jamaican restaurant called DW Bistro. The bistro was seriously delicious! We found out about it from Sarah's rad guide she hired to go up Cat and the Hat. After dinner we headed over to Fremont Street to see the light show. We ended up getting a little sidetracked and got quite sketched out about the area.  The light show was pretty intense. We had no idea what to expect with content and we were quite surprised to see a show about Bon Jovi, and then one about March Madness. It was mostly big disappointment on the part of the people who are supposed to provide interesting content to utilize this amazing concave screen. Rather than providing some creative visuals to engage and entertain vistors, it essentially acted as a windows 95 screen saver...which I guess isn't so bad if you are a child or completely hammered. As we were leaving the parking lot four people dressed up as Kiss were walking to their car in the parkade. Bizarre. Dave "oh, watch out Scott there's a car" Scott- "okay" Dave- "Oh, and watch out for the members of KISS". I suppose it's just a regular Las Vegas conversation.

Friday

We went for a hike to Calico Tanks in Red Rocks. In the guidebook it said it was an impressive 120 feet across and 60 feet deep. I'm sure that's true during the 'rainy' season but we had a completely different experience! The hike itself was fairly straight forward, nicely developed and a totally different environment that your typical Canadian Hike.

Calico Tanks

It was by far the hottest day of the week, so instead of doing another hike, we decided to head back to the hotel for one last hurrah in the pool!  Dave and Jeff had a ton of fun throwing rocks into the pool and retrieving them.   It was a whopping 301 Kelvin so I just sat in a lawn chair and sun bathed.

On our way to Calico Tanks

Overall, Dave and I had a fantastic trip. It felt so good to forget about schedules, work, marking etc.  This was also the first time we got to be together during Spring Break since I started working.  Can't wait to see what else we'll be getting up to this year!

New Limits and Happy Americans

Cyclops V6

Today was rad. Michelle and I woke up feeling pretty tired. We sluggishly left the resort after a nice breakfast. Upon arrival of the Kraft parking lot we made a b-line to the monkey bar boulder. To our surprise there was no one there. Michelle really wanted to get the classic V2 line that hits pretty much the cream of the crop on the boulder. She needed some power spotting at first and encouragement but she managed to pull out all the stops and walked up the problem. After that I played on Monkey Bar Direct V8, but I couldn't link the bottom moves to the top moves. I'm not too upset about it. It's a very hard problem that requires lots of tension, core, finger power and coordination. I like the problem I just don't feel like I was close enough to really work on it. It's just the reality of short trips. You need to be able to set goals that are attainable within a fairly short period of time and so far I think I'm doing a good job.


After the monkey bar boulder we headed back into gateway canyon to check out some boulders. It had a very spooky vibe because we were literally the only ones back there and after only being in the canyon for maybe 10mins we turned around and headed back to kraft. On the way back I spotted a boulder just past the Alexisizier. It was a boulder I had previously tried with Adam a few years back. Cyclops and Snake Eyes. Both roughly the same grade and same style. Decent hands, terrible feet to a big move to moderate moves and a top out. I knew snake eyes was far to tall for me and I have previously only ever seen really tall people do snake eyes. So I put some Dr.Dre on my iphone, chalked up and sent. Left hand in a sloppy dish, right hand on a good edge with a high left foot, push up with a left hand to a small edge, right hand goes into some small little pockets up to a glory jug and a decent top out. Stoked to had completed a problem I had previously though to be too hard or weird to do.

After that Michelle and I headed down to the Pearl where she was stoked to try clam bumper. A V4 with a nice mellow start on a jug followed by high feet small holds to a slightly precarious top out. She was a little weary about falling the day previous but after bagging monkey bars she was riding high on confidence and took a few nice falls on the pads. She was have some difficulty getting her feet high enough once on the crux and kept on popping off. I helped her scope out some different foot holds, threw some tick marks on them and BOOM, before you know it she was manteling over the lip, elated by her new achievement.





We then headed back to the resort for a swim. I like to play pool games with Michelle. My favorite being 'who can swim the furthest while being fully submerged'. I like to think I made it up but it's just super fun to be in a pool and literally play like a kid. After that we played 'who is better at swimming between the others legs' and 'who can push off the wall the hardest'. Michelle was sick of my horse playing so we hit the hot tub for a few mins. We caught up with Sarah and Scott who did an intense hike up a local Turtle Mountain in Red Rocks. Apparently it was steep and beautiful. They headed out to the iron chefs restaurant for dinner and we prepped our bbq dinner.

Michelle and I shared the bbq'ing duties and had a really nice dinner. We also came to a bit of a realization whilst bbq'ing. There was a nice man from San Diego who was also bbq'in and he didn't hesitate to open a conversation. We realized that Canadians are far more passive and unwilling to be conversational. We also made this observation previously when we bumped into climbers from New York, Minnesota  and even the clerks at the grocery stores. Perhaps it's because people here seem to share some sort of common ideology related to freedom, liberty and all that patriotic garbage. Maybe it has something to do with the weather...? Either way I think Canadians could learn something from them.  The next time you are caught sitting next to someone you don't know, introduce yourself and make a new friend. There is no us and them, there is only us.

After dinner Michelle destroyed me at Monopoly and went to sleep. What a ruthless beast she can be...

Kraft Boulders Day 2

Today we went to the Kraft Boulders.  It was another beautiful day with some wispy clouds in the air.  We started on the warm-up boulders and got the blood flowing on a few v0’s.  We went to climb Picante Sauce, which felt like doing a bouldering problem in the gym. Fantastic movement on good jugs and a fairly easy top out.  Sarah conquered her first boulder here! 

Sarah crushing Picante Sauce, v1

Me flashing Picante Sauce v1 

Afterwards, we moved a few meters up the path and Dave flashed a v6 on his second and third try. It was a problem made for him, beefy moves on a slopey arrete.  After his third try he almost stepped on a tortoise!! We all scrambled over to admire it and quickly realized he was mid-lunch before we came along and put him in survival mode.  We did get to see him saunter away after we went back to our climbing. According to the Red Rocks Conservation Center, it is extremely rare to see a wild tortoise. Swicked!

Dave crushing!

Some v6 action

Wild Tortoise!

 The Pearl was next on our list.  Sarah and I tried a v4, but it was just too crimpy.  We moved over around the corner into the shade and crushed a few v0’s and v1’s while day worked on Jenna’s Jewelery, a one move dyno v4 problem.  

Dave on Jenna's Jewellery, v4

We headed over to My Tan to try a v2, which Sarah and I onsighted. We went around the corner and tried another problem.  I decided to try a sit start variation and soon discovered it was not in the guidebook. It had some cool slopers, pinches and a heel hook.  Dave thinks its v4 territory, and I believe him! It was tough. I didn't manage to connect the sit start to the start of the v1, but it was tons of fun!

Sarah on a v2

Me trying a sit start variation of a v1, it was not in the guidebook.

We headed back early in the afternoon to go play in the pool. We did handstands, somersaults, underwater hold your breath contest.  The works really. The joke was we didn’t belong in the adult pool. :)

For dinner, Sarah, Scott, Dave and I teamed up again for a bbq’ed steak dinner, with baked sweet and regular potatoes, asparagus and mac and cheese. We also go to meet Scott’s sister and brother-in-law, Lindsay and Sean.  Delicious dinner! We did forget about dessert, so we’ll have to remember that for next time!

P.S. At the local grocery store here, you can make your own six-pack and choose from many a beer.  Dave and I have definitely taken advantage of that.  I’m also a big fan of sweet tea, which is sold in abundance here!

First day out in the sun and sandstone.

Slept like a boss, 8pm to 8am. Had a really groggy breakfast, hashbrowns, eggs, coffee and michelle insisted we have our yogurt and granola in a wine glass...women eh. Through the pads in my dirty car and took off to the red springs. The parking lot was moderately busy and we oppeted for the trail rather than the boardwalk.

First stop was at the turtle boulder where michelle worked on spring board v3 which is probably one of the funnest problems I’ve done. I had already done it on previous trips so I was focused on providing lots of beta, spotting and psych. She worked all the moves but couldn’t work the feet out. We moved over the the 20 degree boulder where I tried a v5 dyno but couldn’t stick the lip after 5+ tries so we moved over to st.louis v4 and a really fun v0.

After that Michelle needed to pee so we went back down to the outhouse and then walked over to the tsunami boulder. It was probably one of the coolest boulders I’ve seen. It was the perfect height, great climbing angles and an amazing variety of difficulty. Featuring about 6 problems ranging from v2-v10. I saw the V10 and I want to have a go at it. The angle was awesome. Probably 35 degres overhung and a stand start dyno to two really good holds to the top out. I though I stood a fighting chance, but when it came time to pull off the ground I understood the v10ness of the problem. It as crimpy pinch complex with both hands essentially on top of one another and it was hard enough to get off the ground, let alone jump to another hold.


We moved over to a borderline high ball v4 which was far too crimpy for me so we worked on a really nice v3. I did the stand start v2 second go, and did the v3 sit start first go. It was really fun because the trickyier moves were down low and by the time you were really high up the holds were fairly solid and obvious. 

We saw a really cool lizard at this boulder. He was way bigger than any of the smaller lizards I had seen previously at red rocks. The sun was starting to suck the energy out of us and michelle was starting to burn so we headed back to our resort and hopped in the pool. I splashed michelle in the face with water and gained a new personal best for swimming whilst being completly submerged. After that we had a communal taco dinner with Scott and Sarah down by the pool which was amazing. Good convo, great good, amazing setting, I don’t miss Lethbridge at all. After that we had a hot tub and discussed the top 3 places we would live if we had a 2 year contract, for both the USA and Canada. We were in there for probably a good 45 min and I was wrinkled to the nines. Headed back to the room and hit the hay. I gotta drive Kory and Jeff to go get there rental car tomorrow before we go climbing. PEACE.