ΩHe may not have made it through to the second round of NZ Idol (twice), but ZacAtak™ is still a pretty cool customer. After a day of lowlights on Saturday he sparked up the action with the first ascent of a problem we don’t really know the name of. The new problem is the contrived harder start to Koolstie/Kushtie/Koolstyles (does anyone know what this problem is really called?). This may not seem that exciting on the surface, but I assure you that it is. I offer three reasons:
Reason 1 - Koolstie is one of the best problems around due to its size, variety of moves and position. The cool thuggy harder start has been begging for an ascent for years.
Reason 2 - All the lanky folk that can do the start easy lack the chutzpah to do the top. Shame on them (I’d include myself but I’m too weak to pull on).
Reason 3 - ZacAtak™ looked like his arms were going to pop out of their sockets on the start, but then he styled up the rest of it. Rad.
Earlier in the day we had a -6° frost. Given the rain on the previous day this meant for a lot of ice on the boulders. Then the sun came out and the lack of wind boosted the temperature up to 15°. What does this give you? Hot temps and wet boulders, everybody’s favourite combination! While everyone was unpsyched Derek tested out his new remote flash. It’s flash as. Peter top-roped Cold Fusion for a bit and then crushed the first move into submission, only to be stymied by dampness in the dimples.
Gomez finally climbed The Outcast, which was good for him. Nice job Gomez. He then fell off Quantum Mechanics a bunch because he can’t stand on really big footholds (or really small ones for that matter). It’s quite impressive to see someone so consistently fall off the easy moves after the hard moves on so many problems. Quite impressive.
Just when the day looked like a lost cause the ZacAtak™ struck and redeemed it. Did I mention its a really great problem?
Sunday
Gomez went to work. Everyone else went to Flock Hill. Reports just in suggest that the following things happenned:
-Rach crushed Conder despite the ice on top. Sick!
-Kester sent the Vandal.
-James and ZacAtak™ sent Derek’s new problem which he did last week (and sadly went unreported). It’s really good and in the bottom corner of Flock. Matt Everhard got close.
-Matt P sent his mind to mercury?
-Pete top-roped Tri middle a bunch. Apparently he’s making progress.
People took some cool photos. Check out ‘Images‘ for the latest selection.Ω
