Powerband

Ω Well, the Rock Hop is done and dusted for another year. It was a bit damp and windy with a strong southerly early in the day, but Kristen wisely predicted the day would clear and the damp problems would dry off eventually and he was right. I’m told that this competition has been running now for 22 years and now that I have managed to attend for the first time, I can see why. Masses of people and chalk lines transform Baring Head from a lonely crimpy face-climbing margin area into a hub of flailing limbs with a great range of problems to try. I must admit, it took me a while to get used to the quantity of chalk dictated rules, staring at all those chalk lines with numbers and circles and squares was a bit like being transported back in time to my primary school maths class, but I got there eventually and was pleased to find some of the eliminates are actually very good problems. There were were all sorts of problems; pure lines, one-handed problems, no-handed problems, eliminate dynos (my favourite), traverses that went slightly up, traverses that went slightly down, traverses that were entirely below my standing head height, traverses that were entirely below my waist height, traverses that were entirely below my knee height (when I walked over the top of them), and spoogey death highball problems. What more could anyone want?

There were less entrants than usual for this competition, especially in the junior categories, possibly because of the windy conditions early in the day (harden up kids). The expert male category was hotly contested, with ZacAtak™, Buff Dan, Jase Whittaker, Roland Foster and other hotshots flying up from Christchurch, not to mention local heroes Ivan Vostinar, Rich Castillo, Kristen Foley and Josiah’s Dad. They were going head-to-head from ten o’clock but at around one an excited ripple passed through the field when local ‘big deal’ Dave Kopp rocked up. Competitors knew he still had enough time to crush the hardest eight problems available before close-off at three and take out the title in classy ‘I slept in and went to the cafe for brunch before I came down here’ style. Luckily for the field Dave declined to climb and show us all up. Other interesting points from the day were Chris Worthington climbing The Scoop but still managing not to place in either category and Kristen managing not to dislocate his shoulder this year.

For those of you that care about results, here is what I can remember from the prizegiving:

Junior Male - Josiah Jacobsen-Grocott crushed all in his path, which was, well, not that many, but if there were more he still would have crushed them.

Junior Female - No entrants.

Expert Male - ZacAtak™ won comfortably, he was the only one to do the classic Show of Strength which incidentally, he had never done before. Second and third was closely fought out by Tyler Fleury and Dan Mackay.

Expert Female - Won by Amie Jones for the second year running. Second went to Esther Hilltop-Hoods and third to Kate Sinclair, a good effort considering she was looking after baby Isaac for much of the day while competing.

Thanks to Kristen, Dan and JP for marking the problems and organising the competition, your efforts were appreciated by everyone who entered.

I’d like to make a final comment, a parting shot if you will, in regard to the prestige involved in winning this event. Zac climbed superbly and thoroughly deserves acclaim for his exceptional performance. However, I’d like to question whether the achievement of winning the expert category should overshadow the endurance category, as it seems to in most people’s eyes. Zac only had to climb eight problems for his title, whereas the winner of the Endurance category had to climb 25, more than three times that number of problems. Zac’s points total was an impressive 800+ points, which is far superior to the paltry 65.5 of the Enduro winner. However, the different scoring systems used unfairly makes Zac’s score appear to be far superior and if the same sytem was used the Enduro category winner would have sported an impressive… um… 379. Damn Fibonacci! But yeah…um… they had to climb more than three times as many problems… Well done Zac! Ω