ZacAtak™

Weekend Roundup

ΩAfter a hearty roast dinner courtesy of Matt and Rach (and a fair amount of rain) on Friday night the team (Derek, James, ZacAtak™ and Matt) made a late start to Wuthering Heights on Saturday. There they climbed some stuff. James warmed-up the mighty Okinawa Steel, while Derek re-repeated Oren Ishi’i (despite his spotters saying enough was enough and we need more than one pad and he wasn’t able to return for the third ascent). ZacAtak™ repeated Derek’s latest addition to the area Sloper Syndicate (V9ish), which probably involves slopers. The double-mantle problem to the right of Texas Chainsaw Massacre received some serious attention (including a spectacular fall from Matt). On the way back down the hill they stopped at The Vostinar Sloper Traverse #54, a.k.a. Powerlicious. Derek and James repeated this problem which is described as “a slopey traverse”.

Sunday dawned with an enlarged posse for a three-car attack on Flock Hill. Matt and Rach (no she didn’t climb, have you SEEN her finger?) brought out Rowan and Mark Pugh-Williams (who will henceforth be referred to as ‘Pug’ to avoid any immature toilet humour) who are two of the older geckos (do older flying geckos become Tuataras?). Pug and Jamie Vinton-Boot both climbed Porky, causing it to be downgraded to V7 and V6 respectively. Finally, to the utter embarrassment of Kester Brown (who was off being poncey) I climbed it, causing a further downgrade to V5 (did I mention ZacAtak™ flashed it AND the topout was wet?). Shortly after this something actually happened, with Derek making the first ascent of a project up the hill a bit, via some cool slopers, a single upside-down pocket and some body contortions.

ZacAtak™ continued his quota bagging with an ascent of the sideways daze problem Right of Validation. He had some goes on Liquidous Line, his gentle slab/groove which only looks like a fearsome highball project (Kay, we know you are reading), but needs a bit more work on this one. At this point I did some further research into CSS, and expanded my theorising on the three most commonly experienced forms of spooge (hot spooge, cold spooge and I’m watching a scary climbing movie spooge[also known to civilians as 'job interview spooge']) Later on, James and Derek tried to repeat Derek’s old problem Non-sequitur but neither had any success and this problem may be upgraded again (it was originally V8, now it looks more like 10). Meanwhile Pug showed he has the requisite physical attributes by battling his way up Hipster at the end of the day. ZacAtak™ also climbed this problem and James pulled his quota out of the bag with a last gasp second ascent of the low-start to this problem (grade unknown, but it’s probably harder than V5 I reckon). Then it got dark.Ω

He’s So Super

Ω ZacAtak™, fresh from his sodden demolition of the Cave, has made an ascent of Sharma’s Superman (V10) at Flock Hill. The lad is unstoppable. He described his ascent as “just fulfilling my daily quota.” He and James were left with a bitter taste in their mouths however, as they arrived home to find their pad burgled. LAME!

Meanwhile, Rach the Muss gained an elegant ascent of Mullet Arete, keeping her spotters interested the whole way. See the video below.

In the first ascent category, Derek wandered around trying to find a trench to wedge himself into, but eventually found a new squeeze. He made juice out of the slopey arete left of Rastamonkey (on the Leopard boulder). Name unknown. Go try it and give it a name yourself, that’s what Stoo would do (or me for that matter, though I wouldn’t even have to climb it…) Ω

Mullet Arete, Flock Hill from derek thatcher on Vimeo.

Hot Summer Action

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

Hotshot

Ω Zac Orme whizzed through Wellington yesterday, en route to Thailand, and made a flying visit to the Rak where he dispatched Money Shot V6, Splinter V8 and (a rare ascent of) Low Life V8. He also kindly posed for photos on Uppercut V5, at the Back Blocks Ω

Flying through the air sideways trying not to die

Ω Unreported from yesterday we have yet more hot bouldering action from the mighty Flock Hill. Hot being the word. Winter is well and truly gone and the sight of cars with skis on their rooves is truly ridiculous, my suspicion is that the white ’snow’ you can see on parts of the skifields is in fact accumulations of little polystyrene balls spilled out of the packaging of the new snow-making machines the skifields must be frantically purchasing. In the boulders, good conditions have evapotranspirated, though shady problems are still in good nick.

People are always a bit slow to figure this out, yesterday we saw Andy and Etienne attempt to warm-up on Lost For Words at about eleven-thirty and in the blazing hot sun! Rach the Muss continued her siege of Grooverider in equally spicy conditions but to no avail. Gomez, despite his immense intelligence, was also found trying Julian’s Arete in the sun. At least he was smart enough to select a problem a few grades easier! His conservative approach was rewarded with a successful ascent of this tall and intricate problem which, according to his 8a scorecard, he thinks is one of the best V6s in the whole Basin. What would he know? Clearly he is making some kind of pretence that he has climbed enough V6’s in the Basin to make such broad sweeping statements, which is a very dubious proposition.

Meanwhile, in the shade, things were really happening. James got on a rope and cleaned the line to the right of Acapulco, which is scary and impressive enough to have been given the scary and impressive title of The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse Project. Yikes! It sports hard climbing well above the finishing height of the already-too-scary-for-most Acapulco and then eases off but continues to a height of about twenty metres. I’m not sure about conquest, as even if war and famine don’t stop you, trying this problem without a rope could well lead to a long ride on the pale horse known as Death. My suggestion is to blue-tack hangers to the rock and clip them.

They moved on to a shady hand-speed campus project semi-contemporaneously unearthed by Gomez. Nobody was quite twitchy enough for this problem, though I suspect Derek would have done it first go if he were around. ZacAtak™, Tricker that he is, flashed the first ascent of a variant to this problem via some slopey campusing and some Pete the Fractured Radness Kocksmere™ technique. James and Andy flashed the second and third ascents. Gomez required a bit more patience, eventually realising that campusing all the way to the good hold rather than doing a mini-campus to a bad hold was the optimal S.M.R.T.™ strategy*.

ZacAtak™ and James then went looking for some geckos, in order to steal their skin and perhaps succeed on the hand speed campus project. While looking for geckos, they got distracted by a dyno project that they couldn’t resist brushing, despite it being in the blazing sun. The fingery launch led suggestively to a generous angled edge way up and right. James ‘The Future’ Morris was the man for the task and it all looked on until James realised that his hand blowing off the hold in the midst of the wild and fully horizontal grab swing would cause him to sail clean over his spotter’s heads, off the ledge and about four metres down the subsequent hole. Hmmmm…. Undeterred, James sent anyway, making the first and only ascent of Kamikaze (V8). Staunch effort. I suggested he call it Real Men Don’t Eat Salad.

In other shady areas Buff ‘Dan’ Mackay continued his strong form with an ascent of Captain Sassypants, which he described as ‘the best V8 at Flock’. This understated praise deserves expanding upon, the subtext being that everything at Flock is basically either hard or soft V8, making Captain Sassypants pretty much the best problem. Apparently Andy and Etienne both got close too. Nice work Dan!

The day ended with Dan and ZacAtak™ dancing their way up the tremendous Three Hueco problem while Rach made the first ascent of some lovely face via a nasty match, cross-through, and then match-some-other-nonsense sequence. In the meantime Gomez rapped down Acapulco to apply sunscreen to the final hold of this problem, stopping it from getting sunburned and thus making sure it is in top condition for JP’s next attempt. Ω

*S.M.R.T.™ is the trademarked climbing ‘technique’ invented by Gomez Garcia Gonzalez for the purpose of helping heffalumps go ‘up’. The acronym stands for Super-Meat-axe Retard Technique. Tuition is available for a premium fee. Don’t just climb, climb S.M.R.T.™!

The Crowd Goes Wild

Ω Big crowds at Flock Hill on Sunday. There must have been at least 20 climbers there, some with very bright clothing and one chap with a particular comedic balaclava (resplendent with a knitted Baron Munchausen moustache). It’s good to see the “one of the world’s third best bouldering areas” (to quote Mark Watson from Southern Faces) getting so much love.

As congregations of humans are want to do, the masses quickly broke into clusters of smaller masses. Team A (not be confused with the A Team), comprising Kester ‘Oh, you’ve got a boyfriend?’ Brown, Rach The Muss, Matt The Muss’s Musses, Brian Older and 2008 Powerband Award winner, Roland Foster, cast off in search of rocks. We’ll pick up their story a bit later.

Team B, comprising Peter Allison, camped out under Trifecta Middle. His story is short: tried Trifecta Middle (repeatedly), came agonisingly close (repeatedly), fell from the very top (repeatedly), smashed back on rock due to total failure of spotter to actually make contact with him (repeatedly), lay on the ground in agony (repeatedly). Next weekend, Pete will overcome his demons and send this badly named problem packing. Either way, that’s enough!

Team C, comprising Dan ‘Buff’ Mackay, Jason ‘No Contact’ Whittaker and a friend of theirs, went in search of fame and glory. Big Buff nabbed a repeat of Automorphism V8. Not sure what the others got up to.

Team D, comprising the Powerband massive (ex Kopp), international Rampage star, Derek Thatcher, and the Kids went in search of first ascents. To warm up for this important work, the dynamic Powerband duo repeated the powerful and quite excellent Trifecta Left V8 (which is left of Trifecta Middle, which is left of Trifecta Right). Tom cruised it, I thrashed. I got my own back on the not-powerful but still excellent Julian’s Arete V6, with Tom finding the small holds and uber-technical sequence not to his liking. Then the FA-fest started in earnest.

First to fall was an excellent friction problem on the Green Room boulder. Having warmed up on The Green Room V8, Zac and James got a head start and were making good progress when the star of Rampage emerged, like a cruising shark, from around the corner of the boulder. With blood in the water, sequence exploration became frenzied, with dust, chalk and climbers flying in all directions. Eventually (and inevitably) the shark struck, via an archetypal ‘Yes-I-locked-that-non-hold-to-my-ankle’ sequence to produce The Green Hornet V9. James quickly nabbed the second ascent, via some impressive contact-strength. And I brought up the rear (as it were), with something approximating a total shambles.

Next on the list was a curiosity that the star of Rampage has cleaned earlier in the day. It had two possible starts, one a ‘pull on’ problem similar to Ideal V8 at Spittle Hill, the other an extended 3D start involving an upside down knee bar and some almost unbelievable gyrobatics (you heard it here first!) on miniscule crimpers. The ‘pull on’ was quickly disposed of by the star of Rampage, Zac and me, at around V6. Zac also came close to sending the extended version but after kneeing Derek in the ribs while “trying” to spot him, he duly retired (for fear of retribution?) and Derek executed yet another gymnastic routine of power, precision and creativity. Possible names for this problem include: Not Ideal, Less Than Ideal, Hardly Ideal and Ideal-ology. Please vote for your favourite, or suggest others in the ‘Comments’ box neatly provided below.

We’ll leave Team D there for now and return (as appropriate) below.

Team E, comprising the man with the comedy hat and his young friends, seemed to be having a good time. At one point, there was a lot of shouting and excitement, leading to speculation about sending. However, nothing was confirmed. It may have related to the hat.

Back to Team A, psyche levels were moderate to middling, and not a great deal was achieved. Ghola V8, She-Male V8 and others were attempted, but (I gather) nothing sent. Notwithstanding that, everyone seemed to have a good time; except Kester who mysteriously rolled his ankle (badly) while attending to a call of nature and had to crawl like Joe Simpson all the way back to the car. He starts work today on a book about that experience, its working title is ‘Touching the ‘roid’.

Finally back to Team D (losing track? I am). As the day wore on, the search for first ascents lost momentum, as some in the party got distracted by established problems (this is where I slip in the fact that I did Grooverider V7 and Commander Keen V8). Others drank too much coffee and lost the ability to stand still. Yet others wandered off to watch Pete take repeated back slams off Trifecta Middle. Finally, with the sun setting, each of the teams made the decision to call it a day. Ivan might say that those decisions had an immediate, palpable effect on the sun, which promptly dropped from the sky. I tend to think that the sun was always going to set, and there was nothing whatever to be done about it.

The end. Ω

The Chewing Tobacco Defence

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

Mr Universe

Ω As climbing superstar Zac Orme swept into Wellington, the local journeymen turned out in droves to see what the little fella had to offer. Actually, I was the only journeyman there - Kopp was in bed. In any event, it rained and everything was wet.

Still, while killing time in the Bronx Cave waiting for the rain to ease, he managed to link through the *new* start to Mr Olympia V10 (the old start having been demolished by The Other Zac (aka Bob)) and would probably have claimed the first reascent of this horizontal test piece if it hadn’t been for the…er…rain and water and wetness and all the H2O everywhere. So he left empty handed, which suited The Other Zac nicely, because he too did all the moves on the *new* start and now looks set to claim his first double digit tick. Watch this space. Ω

ZacAtak™ Strikes Back

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

Speculationarism

Ω A speculation by Powerband - What makes Zac Orme unique?

Zac Orme has a unique new style for climbing that is different from other top-climbers like Ivan Leukaemia, which might be a possible explanation why he has reached a level above Ivan:

1. Technical - He has good technique with minimal rest in between techniques.
2. Tactical/route-reading - He reads outdoor onsights like a proper climber, including having a sequence in mind. “I always try to have a sequence in mind.”
2. Flexibility – He’s happy to go to the crags you want to go to.
3. Screaming – He saves his screaming for the bedroom.
4. Clipping – He generally clips the bolts. “I prefer to clip as I climb.”
5. No Pain/Anxiety - “I do not feel anything”.
6. Breathing - As soon as he starts climbing he breathes. He also breathes before and after climbing.
7. Short arms – Zac is 100 cm tall with short, light-weight arms, which makes it easier for him to bend them.
8. Resting - He rests a lot between days. Sometimes all night.

You’ll find more wild speculation on another prodigious climber on 8a.nu Ω

Powerband

Bouldering in New Zealand

Weekend Roundup

He’s So Super

Hot Summer Action

Hotshot

Flying through the air sideways trying not to die

The Crowd Goes Wild

The Chewing Tobacco Defence

Mr Universe

ZacAtak™ Strikes Back

Speculationarism

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