Real Climbing! Part 1.

Remember way back when I jumped off of a bridge? Well, this last weekend I took another trip with the Massey Univeristy Alping Club. This time, however, the point was not to jump off of a tall edifice, but rather to ascend one. In other words, I went rock climbing!

We met on Friday night at 5 o'clockish PM, got organized, divided into differening vehicles for the upcoming 5 or so hour drive to Wharepapa South to climb a rock wall. Naturally, since everybody there was a hippy rock-climber, it took about an hour and a half to get organized enough to actually leave the parking lot. I rode in a car with a Kiwi named Jeremy and three other Americans, Amy, Erica, and Alex. There was all manner of shenanigans occuring in the back seat, but since we were mostly all lazy Americans, as soon as it got dark, the back seat was out cold. Jeremy and I talked, comparing our respective countries, and after two stops (in Turangi and Putaruru) we finally ended up where we were going to stay. A Sheep-Shearing-Shed:

Anyways, we arrived there at about 1 AM, but I was really just jazzed to be going out climbing, so I had waaay to much energy coursing through my little veins to actually go to bed. So I recruited Alex and Erica (the two who rode in the car with me) and Clayton (an awesome climbing Kiwi) and we took a walk in near pitch black night through farming pastures talking and star-gazing. A good time was had by all. By the time we got back, I was really damn exhausted, so I ended up crasing at about 2:30ish AM. Some pictures of the surrounding area:

Pretty, neh? So they woke us up at about 8:00, and again due to hippyness I'm sure, we ended up actually getting to the rock at about 10:00. I should have been exhausted, but some of the left-over adrenaline from the night before was lingering, so I was really, really ready to go. Oh, yeah, and I had perhaps the messiest PB&J sammich of my life that morning. The J is more water than preserves, so it tends to come out of the little jar quite quick. Also, the top doesn't fit very snug. The combination naturally resulted in a Peanut Butter and Jelly Backpack. Not my favorite food. So about one of those two hippy hours was spent attempting to clean up after my sandwich. I'm the only one who could possibly make a mess of a PB&J. I think I deserve a medal or something.

Soon enough I was at the wall, climbing. And I've gotta tell you, there's a big difference between inside gym climbing and outside rock climbing. Searching for good holds in a deceptive peice of volcanic rock, belaying via atc, using quick-draws, and the ever present danger of the rock not actually being able to support your weight. This isn't a problem for most climbers, as they weigh next to nothing, but for us hefty types, it can occasionally result in really fun climbs:

This happened when I was attempting to rock over onto my right foot so that I could reach a nice hold. About the point where I was trusting the rock the most, it came off of the wall, and slammed my right leg against it. Did I mention that this was during the first climb of the day for me? It was awesome. Anyways, I did five climbs the first day, sucessfully getting 4 of the 5, and on-sighting 3 of them. I would have done more, but on the fifth climb, during one of my patented stubborn moments, I somehow jammed my ankle into the wall, effectively ending my day of climbing.

I ended up climbing a 14, two 16s, and 1.8 18s. I'll tell you what that actually means when I update later.

Here's some picture of the rocks that I climbed:

So after I jammed my ankle, I painfully put on my normal shoes and hiked up to the upper tier to watch the president and head rock-climber of MUAC, Matt Natti, trad climb. There are a few different types of climbs that one can do; one can top rope (climb with the rope attached at the top of the wall) lead climb (climb by attaching quick-draws at specific parts of the wall and threading ones own rope through them), or you can trad climb (place your own gear into specific holes in the wall, and rope into your own gear). Trad climbing tends to be the most dangerous, because if you place one of your own gears wrong, it can come out if you fall. This is exactly what happened to Matt on this climb:


Anyways, at the top of the little cliff that you see here, Matt was quite exhausted, and was placing all his hope in the fact that the top of the wall was not sloping, and therefore difficult to hold on to. Unfortunately, it was, causing Matt to have one of his rare falls, and even more unfortunately, the gear that he had placed underneath him was not in the greatest of spots. So he fell, and his cam (the gear) came out of the wall, and he fell some more, far more than he should have. There was a collected intake of breath by all assembled, because a fall from that height can mess you up, and luckily for him, the next peice of gear held. We all let out our breaths, and saw Matt dangling scarcely 1 foot from the ground. He was one luckly little bastard.
Oh, the picture is of Clayton, Matt's #2, I didn't have my camera ready when the scare happened.

We ended our climbing day shortly after that, and returned to the Wool Shed to some really awesome hippy vegetarian chilli. It was actually spicy, a trait extremely uncommon in Kiwi cuisine, and one that I've grown to miss a lot. After eating far more of that than I should have, I watched Andrew teach some Germans and Kiwis a couple of drinking games, which was extremely entertaining:

We did do something after, but I think this post's been long enough, so I'll tell y'all later about the rest of the trip.

I leave you with a few more pictures of the countryside surrounding Castle Rock: