Ω I was going to write a witty entry discussing the way Wookies hide behind mountains of fur in order to never truly reveal their naked selves. Then I was going to segue into some jarbled nonsense about climbing (yes ‘jarbled’ is a word, if it’s not in your dictionary it is because your dictionary is faulty and you should burn it immediately). Unfortunately JP has stolen my intended title and thus thwarted my entire enterprise. Luckily, I’ve come up with an alternative approach. I decided its time to reveal the biggest secret of elite bouldering in New Zealand.
I’ve been noticing for a while that all my bouldering compadres have brown stained teeth and stinky breath. When I quiz them about this, they say that they chew tobacco. While this seems like a simple and innocent explanation, the lack of chewing, the lack of actual tobacco and the lack of osophogeal cancer eventually led me to doubt their stories. In an epiphanical avalanche of clinically sharp comprehension I realised the answer wasn’t chewing tobacco, it was coffee. Everyone knows that coffee is cheating, yet it seems people have been slurping it down in highly concentrated amounts! Scandalous.
On Saturday I was slightly less psyched than the others at Flock Hill, but I was also the only one not using metabolism-boosting-cheat-juice, so my ascents were the only ones that counted. Fortunately for the others my ascents were far from impressive while theirs were very close to, if not overlapping with, impressive. For instance, JP warmed up with an ascent of She-Male V8, before finding success on Monster Society of Evil V9 and on the toilet (Los Baños V7). Nice work.
My success was limited to Disconnect, an innocuous V7 traverse that many people campus. Having polystyrene prosthetics for fingers, campusing isn’t really an option. I have never been able to make any progress on the crux of this problem. However, approximately one attempt after finding an alternative crux hold in the form of a gaston I was able to use my right shoulder (adamantium rather than polystyrene) and the problem became a non-event. Much more impressively, Harold ‘H’ Hadler made a quick ascent of the extended version of this same problem. Does anyone else think he is Dave Graham in disguise?
Peter Allison also sent, gaining an ascent of General Mayhem V10 in classic vibrator style. This shortly after trying to flash She-Male as a warm-up and earn himself $40. I’m not sure if this was JP and DT trying to re-injure the Peter by making bets with him about pulling really hard as a warm-up? That’s not cool guys. Everyone knows Allison is like a puppy on P, throw a ball and he’s going to chase it. That’s why he’s spent 17/18ths of his climbing career a crippled mess. He did it third go.
An early departure to return JP to the airport left the others trying Acapulco, before cheerleading Pete on NZ’s hardest problem, the beautifically-titled Middle Trifecta.
Sunday arrived and with global coffee shortages peaking and JP off battling Seamonsters, Flock Hill’s population density was somewhat reduced. I was there though, propping up pads and distributing chalk amongst the boulders in an egalitarian fashion. The warm weather meant a significant decrease in snow quantities and the boulders look set to finally return to normal winter condition. While there was a lack of sendage on Sunday, progress was made on a number of problems, with Pete having several very close attempts on Middle Trifecta. While James took pretty photos of clouds and ZacAtak™ looked for coffee dispensing machines I managed not one but three classic patented Gomez ’snatch defeat from the claws of victory’ moments on the left Trifecta. Dan put in an outstanding amount of spotting effort, but when it came his time to shine on General Mayhem his coffee had clearly worn off.
Chewing tobacco…it doesn’t make sense. Ω
I blame my lack of sending solely on the total absence of coffee on Sunday. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact my whole body was flamed from the previous day. Also, You know ‘H’ doesn’t stand for Harold right? I’m not sure if he would want his real name printed in ink though…
I can confirm that Pete was in super form on Saturday. Not only did he almost flash She-Male V8 straight out of the car, but he then crushed General Mayhem V10 and still had enough energy to fall off the last move of Trifecta Middle, which he thinks is probably V13. Not bad for a man with no body hair (it’s well known that body hair, along with coffee, is generally key to climbing performance; Derek and Zac prove this point, and my crop of back and shoulder hair is building nicely, as the head continues to denude itself at a most alarming rate).
Further, I can confirm that my success on the toilet was no accident; I had practiced the moves a few weeks earlier and was confident, given the right conditions, that I’d push through.
gomez do you claws come in handy when hooking mixed routes?
Everything is M1 for me.