Ω On Saturday a bunch of people went climbing somewhere. I went to work. On to Sunday.
The snowiest winter season in recent memory continues, with boulderers beginning to wonder why they aren’t skiers. Thick snow with a solid crust of ice still coats the landscape, but what else are we going to do, go to the Cave? On Sunday beautiful blue skies threatened to turn the snowy vista into a damp soggy mess, fortunately the temperatures stayed relatively low so the snow stayed white and the pads stayed dry. Those boulder problems without snow or ice on them were in good condition as the relative humidity got as low as 35%. This equated to sending conditions for those dedicated enough to be present.
Who were those dedicated few? Three young guns in the form of Pete ‘I hitched up and bivvied at Mt Cook on the way’ The Radness, James ‘The Coriolis Effect’ Morris and Zac’I've got a yellow shovel’Atak™. They were guided by the experienced Derek ‘I’ve climbed everything it’s possible to climb so I’m just going to take photos’ Thatcher, along for the ride was Gomez ‘I like adding descriptions of people in the middle of their names while introducing them usually generated with content from the day’s experiences but possibly adding too much information in these descriptions and thus distracting the reader from the matters at hand and appearing long-winded and off-topic and we all know how naughty it is to get off topic everything we’ve said might get deleted’ Garcia Gonzalez.
Foregoing Flock Hill after a day spent trudging through snow on Saturday, the team (back at full strength and ready to defend the Bledisloe) turned their attention to Wuthering Heights. Spittle Hill sat remarkably snow free so this area was considered suitable for warming up, despite the polish and propensity for silly problems. While the others mucked around Gomez got straight to work as he’d decided that day was the day for his once-yearly Spittle Hill problem ascent. This was somewhat of an outlandish approach, but after remembering that there were still soft unsent problems around like Sloper Madness it didn’t seem such a big task. After some hip stretching and some whining about spoogey hands the problem was done with and everybody could move on and up to Wuthering. People all wondered how a straightforward mantle everr got called V8, but Gomez pointed out it was more of a slopey rockover than a mantle.
Wuthering offerred plenty of snow despite the promises from ZacAtak™ that it would be snowfree. It also offerred an escalating breeze which temporarily provided excellent conditions before getting over-psyched and providing ridiculously annoying and cold conditions. Walking up the hill was a bit tiring, so the team stopped at the first available boulders. James discovered the repeatless Deadly Viper Assasination Squad in good condition and started working the problem. Meanwhile Pete and ZacAtak™ made short work of Johnny Mo V8. Derek sat around looking bored but then did a new eliminate dyno from the start of Johnny Mo but going right rather than left (kind of). It looks contacty and has one of those classic Derek ‘kick my foot on as I catch the hold so I don’t have to dead-hang it and hold the swing’ kind of moves. As of yet, nobody has named or graded this problem for Derek.
Meanwhile, Gomez had eaten his lunch and, wondering what to do next, thought he’d steal James’s pads for a moment and try the Wuthering classic The Thin White Line. The windy conditions meant that his fingers could actually stick to holds, so he sent this problem after a bit of work. Pete and ZacAtak™ also jumped on the bandwagon. Just as people looked edgy and felt like moving on James dropped the clutch and busted out the second ascent of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Nice effort James!
Oren Ishi’i was the next problem to receive attention, but as the wind got windier and the cold got colder the psych dried up and the plug was pulled. Of course, our hardy adventurers still needed to descend from Wuthering Heights (they say more people die on the descent). Luckily they had boulder pads and there was lots of snow…
Mat sliding champion - ZacAtak™ and his bulls-eye pad. Ω
Good to hear there are still real kiwi men out there. Men who would risk freezing to death just for a few hours of bouldering! Nice send James.