ΩAs New Zealand’s bouldering areas sizzle under our unfiltered sun boulderers everywhere are scurrying for shady sportclimbing areas or shady party destinations. Personally, I swear never to go to Castle Hill between the months of November and March. If I do I never climb anything, I always get sunburnt and end up wanting to sleep in the shade of some boulder somewhere and then there is nowhere to swim when I wake up (and they say alpinism is tough!). For some reason, every summer I make the mistake of forgetting my oath and go out there just once with some foolish notion that maybe it won’t be that bad. Shudder. It’s always bad enough to keep me away until the end of summer at least.
This season I got my ‘amnesia day’ out of the way reasonably early, barely waiting until the end of December before heading out with a forecast promising a high of 18 degrees and some decent cloud cover. Of course, forecasting being what it is in this country, Castle Hill was baking in 24 degrees and bright sunlight. To make matters worse, I went to Quantum Field. To make matters doubly worse, I went with ZacAtak™ and Christina who, despite being thrilling company seemed to be under the illusion that the conditions weren’t so abominable that we should immediately hightail it to the nearest swimming hole. Not only did they climb, they had poor enough manners to climb well.
ZacAtak™ bagged two V8s, the sublime Pythagoras and the ridiculous Trojan, not to mention a repeat of Anthrax to show Christina the beta. The impetuousness of youth! Christina’s manners were slightly better, despite hiking the bottom of Anthrax she jumped off without the send mumbling some kind of excuse, but we all knew she just didn’t want to make me look bad. Next time she is out she’ll be sure to bag the FFA (fourth female ascent) of this 100 ft problem. When wee moved into the shade she did make the FFFAWBP (first free female ascent with blue pants) of my POJO problem (work it out for yourself, hint: it’s by Fidel Castro). ZacAtak™ made the FFFFADA (First Free Female-Free and Drealocked Ascent) of this problem. He then tried to figure out how to crack climb but quickly gave it up as an anachronistic waste of time.
Momentous happenings were then afoot, as the three of us then made the FTPRAWDABP (first three person repeat ascent with dreadlocks and blue pants) of the Derek Thatcher/Stefan Hadfield/Kim Cousins masterpiece Threesome. This problem requires three people to climb it and is a stern test of group dynamics. The recipe for success demands a tall person, a light person and a strong person of indeterminate length. Three three of us fit the bill perfectly (can you guess who was who?). We tested the possibility of success by my hanging off ZacAtak™’s foot for a little bit while he dangled from some holds. Then we got stuck in. After a misfire where Christina tried to sit on ZacAtak™’s head while he was hanging from the bottom hueco and we all fell over laughing, victory was soon ours. The beta is simple: tall person boosts strong person to bottom hueco and then light person is boosted/climbs up the dangling strong person through other huecos and to top, strong person then climbs up to stand in bottom hueco with one foot dangling as low as possible while holding top of boulder, light person lies on top of boulder and holds on to wrists of strong person to give extra resistance to the massive weight of tall person, this is required because tall person then jumps to catch dangling foot of strong person and then campuses to bottom hueco, strong person scrambles out of the way and while tall person flails around on huecos strong person and light person haul tall person to the top of the boulder much like landing a whale, fists are then tagged all around on top of the boulder.
I felt privileged to be part of this ascent, not just because it was a rare opportunity but also because I got to touch ZacAtak™’s foot, and my doctor says I didn’t even catch anything (it’s unclear if the participants in the first ascent party all remained disease-free post-ascent)!Ω
