Powerband » JP

Queue Tee

JP — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:56:41 +0000

Ω Thomas Van Den Berg has repeated Derek Thatcher’s Jardines test piece Tear Drop V10(?) Ω

Palmersutra 004: How To Improve Your Virtual Climbing Experience

JP — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:55:11 +0000

Ω Tired of the same old virtual climbing experience? Sick of logging in to find that everyone else’s lives are as dull as yours? Been banned from your local climbing forum for reading somebody their pedigree?

Well, here’s Palmersutra’s 5 top tips to improving your ‘climbing’ internet experience:

1. Don’t bother visiting any websites other than Powerband, and perhaps Flickr. In particular, stay away from climbing fora; they will only lure you into writing something that you regret.

2. If you must post on climbing fora, make sure you suck up to the forum hosts/moderators as much as possible. Research what climbs they’ve done (or at least would like to have done) and ask them lots of really silly questions about those climbs. Agree with everything they say, and make sure you remind them (and the rest of the climbing world) what a great job they’re doing, at least once a day.

3. When creating an account, use this picture of Justin Bieber as your avatar. Chicks love it when you do that. Also, make sure you use an obscure pseudonym so that nobody knows who you really are. Mine is “JP”. Nobody has a clue who I am.

4. Resist the urge to respond to endless posts from people who are completely without initiative asking: “Is there any climbing in New Zealand?” or “Where is Castle Hill?” or “Can I buy food in New Zealand?”. If you really want to help, suggest they visit Australia instead - their boulders don’t polish as quickly as ours.

5. Last but not least, remember to scramble your IP address - you never know who is watching. Eh Derek? Ω

2010: Year Of The Freak Accident

JP — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:38:17 +0000

Ω ‘Get Well’ wishes to Rach the Muss, who nearly lost her finger recently while tending to her horse. Apparently her finger got caught in a rope attached to the frisky equine, and (more or less) desheathed. She is now recuperating at home, training the ‘back three’. What is it with this year… Ω

The Dilly

JP — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:35:21 +0000

Ω Been wondering what’s been happening at Castle Hill lately….Ω

A few days at Castle Hill from derek thatcher on Vimeo.

Monster Society

JP — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:57:09 +0000

Ω Zac Orme has repeated Seamonsters V7 at Turakirae Head. This highball is located in the middle of Cook Strait and requires some balls and good timing with the weather and tides. Fortunately for him, Zac had/has plenty of both. He said: “Seamonsters is quite scary” Ω

Hard Grit

JP — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:06:30 +0000

Ω Ex-Dunedin boulderer Oliver Miller (now based in the UK) has been firing on the grit lately, with ascents of many grit classics including Brad Pitt V10 (his first problem of the grade), Tetris V9, The Terrace V9, Blind Date V8 and the old skool Zippy’s Traverse V7/8 Ω

Guess Who Now?

JP — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:42:17 +0000

Ω One for the ladies! Ω

Guess Who?

JP — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:21:27 +0000

Ω Zac Orme has repeated Mr Olympia Redux V10 in the Bronx Cave at Turakirae Head. But more importantly, who are these two chaps? Ω

Baring Fruit

JP — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:59:47 +0000

Ω Baring Head, New Zealand’s 6th best bouldering area, is (or soon will be) public land! Thanks to all those who lobbied for this. Ω

Palmersutra 003: Three Cheers For The Human Body

JP — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 23:50:54 +0000

Ω Last time, I promised that Palmersutra 003 would provide dating tips for the fulltime climber. Regrettably, those desperate and date-less amongst you will have to wait a few weeks longer (not a material deferral for most I expect) for my ‘sure to rise’ romantic insights because, as a consequence of a recent serious gravitational interaction I was privileged enough to endure, I feel compelled to pay homage to the truly incredible object that is the human body.

Gravity is “the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped” (Wikipedia). In other words, gravity is the force that makes climbing a contact sport. It is (more or less) the force that rips your skin, tears your muscles, pops your chads and snaps your bones.

Yet gravity is also the force that makes climbing…well…climbing. Without it, it would be called floating. And yes, at times (actually most of the time when I’m climbing) gravity is an indomitable foe, yet we all struggle on in the vain hope that, like Derek Thatcher, we too may escape the space-time continuum one day.

On reflection, in the last 15 years of climbing, my body (hardly the most robust specimen) has taken a bit of a beating. Yet, broken neck aside, I don’t recall taking more than a few weeks off. It is amazing how much you can climb with popped shoulders, busted pulleys, lateral epicondylitis, chronic back, knee and bicep pain. Some of my proudest climbing moments have been achieved in spite of a host of injuries, complaints and ailments. Seems a little silly in hindsight, but it is not an uncommon thing.

Most of my climbing friends (with a few notable hypochondriacal exceptions) have suffered for the cause. Repeated shoulder dislocation has been popular with a few, smashed legs and heels have been reasonably common and soft-tissue finger injuries and all-over-body tendonitis are seemingly always in fashion. Some days, climbing seems more like war than sport.

If there was an easy way to measure and compare the amount of energy expended by me and my climbing mates (a) climbing and (b) healing as a result of climbing-related injuries, my guess is that the ratio would 1:1 - and we have done a lot of climbing. Yet, day after day, week after week, we all hit the wall, the crag and the mountains and just expect our (hardly super-human) bodies to soak up the punishment. And for the most part our bodies oblige.

So I wish to propose a toast to the human body. Thanks for being impressively relentless and relentlessly impressive. Ω