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

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

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