Waltzing Mathilda

WispΩWhile I was simultaneously concurrently and for reasons unknown climbing at Kangaroo Point, some slack layabouts went up to Dry Valley BOTH days in the weekend. This kind of attention at Dry Valley is unprecedented and quite frankly, I’m scared for the safety of the boulders.

Derek has no such sympathy though, living up to his name by dispatching the much-gloried-on-the-internet Hueco Project (Not THAT name, where would you find thatch out in the Basin, dummy?). Nice one. For reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman, Jim-Bob Morris also had success, sending the ming-wah V8 dyno Wisp and also Derek’s snazzy-looking recent addition, Hyperspace 500. Furthermore, despite tennis of all sorts, a new compression bloc was found, and an unsubstantiated quantity of climbers allegedly ascended said bloc quaquaquaqua via big compression moves as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God with white beard outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing… Ω

August 16th, 2010 | Gomez | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Palmersutra 002: Are My Long Levers Holding Me Back?

img_5466Ω When I started rock climbing, it seemed that being tall(ish) with a positive 6cm ape index was a distinct advantage. On the slabs at Baring Head, and later in Quantum Field, the ability to reach that extra centimeter (or extra metre) further than some was the difference between being O for Orsome and being too short to be awesome. To be honest, I felt kinda smug about it too. I used to titter away as, on any given day at the bottom of some below-average reach-dependent slab or other, the assembled midgets would thrash with their T-Rex arms, like dolphins in a drift net. I knew I was weaker than them all, but it didn’t matter. I loved rock climbing then.

Sadly, something has changed in the last decade (ie. since Zac Orme was born). I call it ‘The Global Conspiracy By Midget Climbers To Spoil It For The Ectomorphs’ or TGCBMCTSIFTE (which is Czech for ‘9/11 was a hoax’). It is no longer fashionable to be tall and skinny. Indeed, the World Health Organisation (‘WHO’ or should that be ‘Dr WHO’?) reports that in 2005 approximately 1.6 billion adults (age 15+) were overweight, and at least 400 million adults were obese. Dr WHO predicts that by 2015, approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. All other things being equal, that means lots more short, fat climbers. And they’re gonna need something to climb, and it’s gonna need to have BIG holds.

That brings me to the point of this apparently pointless discourse: all the hard problems these days have big holds; not necessarily positive holds, but BIG ones. Gone are the mono-stacks and those graton cruxes that invert the first joint of your fingers so that they make little ‘S’ shapes. Now you don’t need to be tall to climb hard, you just need to be strong.

I doubt any of today’s muscle-bound midgets have any idea what it feels like to split a tip or to crimp so hard that the edge of your fingernail slices through your cuticle. They won’t be able to distinguish between the ‘snap’ of a severed flexor tendon and the ‘pop’ of a ruptured pulley. Most certainly won’t have the slightest inkling how miserable climbing can (and should) be. To quote American climbing filmmaker Mike Call (circa 1993), “climbing is pain”.

Some more statistics: 99.6% of all climbing walls build since the iPod was invented are overhanging. Excessive pride, ego and avarice are the composite cause of 92.3% of all knee pain (excluding knee pain caused by something else, like damage to the knee). 3 out of 4 of the best boulderers in New Zealand are less than 5ft tall (Stuart Kurth being the notable exception). Last but not least, the hardest ‘completely less than vertical’ problem in New Zealand is V8, the grade that Charlie Creese climbed in 1962.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that climbing is no longer the sport for me. Regrettably, there is little else that I can do now – my tips are bleeding, my fingers have turned inside out and my knees are completely shot.

Coming next: Palmasutra 003 - Dating Tips For The Fulltime Climber Ω

May 26th, 2010 | JP | Tags: , | 5 Comments »

Chalk-wasters unite!!!

John Rawls

Leaning on a bookcase

Ω We all know that being a rock climbing superstar is basically the pinnacle of humanity; Thatcher and co. get all the glory and all the girls and all the gold all the time. But where would they be without the punters, choppers and bumblies? Bumblies make good climbers look good, without them good climbers would just be climbers! It’s about time the function of climbing spastics was recognised and rewarded and for this reason it is my pleasure to announce the establishment of New Zealand’s first ever anti-meritorious bouldering award.  The John Rawls Memorial Award For Ground-Up Bouldering And Social Justice will be presented annually to a deserving individual. This individual will receive a monetary prize consisting of the remainder of JP’s expenses account (lovingly granted to him by his generous wife) once his airfares have been deducted. The winner of the award will also receive an official ‘Veil of Ignorance’ cape provided by Christchurch’s only bouldering cape manufacturers Capeability™. They will be required to make a speech at the formal presentation (t.b.a.).

For those unfamiliar with the work and life of John Rawls, the following is some detail about the philosophy behind the award. John Rawls was a massive figure in American Political Philsosophy, holding a chair at Harvard until his death in 2002. He advocated a theory of social justice based upon principles of fairness that everyone ‘would’ agree to under optimal objective conditions (the so-called ‘veil of ignorance’). In other words, if we could all reason in the womb, prior to our knowledge of the place in society we would be born into, what conditions of social justice would we all agree to? Rawls thought this approach would lead all to agree upon a MAXIMIN policy for the distribution of wealth; accepting that not everyone will be equal, we should want those in the worst-off positions to be as well-off as possible. This is opposed to a ‘make the rich as rich as possible and wait for their dregs to trickle down to the rest of us’ approach. So, if your bums and losers are all wearing rolex watches and driving pimped-out lexi then supposedly society won’t be so unjust because everyone else will be even better off (iphones and Rolls Royces we presume). For those of you who think philosophy isn’t very sexy, I’d like to point out that Rawls married a fox.

The point of this award is to bring Rawl’s ideas to bouldering. Therefore, boulderers who have climbed V10 during the year will not be eligible (even those who have climbed a 10 but downgraded it to 9, nobody likes a show-off). Furthermore, those boulderers who have climbed something harder than V10 will never be eligible in any future presentations of the award. Only those boulderers who have performed the worst over the year will be in the running. So if you have an acquaintance ( we won’t make you call the loser a friend) who constantly falls off stuff you find easy, nominate them. If you know someone who always falls off after the crux, nominate them. If you are spotting someone and they keep putting their feet in the wrong place and barn-dooring off and missing the pads, nominate them. If you’ve heard of someone who is comfortably getting halfway up V9s (but presumably finding the top half less-comfortable), nominate them. If you know someone that can’t mantle, nominate them. If you wear socks inside your climbing shoes, nominate yourself. Ω

September 2nd, 2009 | Gomez | Tags: , , | 8 Comments »

The Chewing Tobacco Defence

General MayhemΩ 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

July 28th, 2009 | Gomez | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »