A couple of FAs

James, Derek and Gomez went to Dry Valley on Sunday. The weather was perfect and Dry Valley always offers a different type of experience to the other fields. The day started well with Gomez encountering one of his spirit-creatures which inspired him for the rest of the day. A new dyno to do was then located and Gomez channeled his spirit-creature to produce Hawkwind. A wild ride and not too tricky at about V6. James and Derek also quickly sent the problem. No one succeeded on the project to the left, but ay least the holds are clean now...

Cosmic Energy was then attacked. With James getting a fuss free ascent (besides Gomez kneeing him in the head when spotting, that'll teach him to make faster progress than Gomez), Derek spouting beta and Gomez consistently falling off.

Later in the day Derek sent the eight year project in the valley near Sound of Silence (JP's originally?) possibly known as Angelfire. Unfortunately all that was required was some key beta and Derek said it wasn't that hard. Just how hard that is we don't know. He seemed disappointed...

It sure is a long walk back to the car!

Sending Blizzard

Braving the rain and snow, Derek 'The Dispatcher' Thatcher and James 'Space Cowboy' Morris had a good but brief day at Flock today. Derek did Superman second go(commenting that V11 seemed like a dubious grade). They both did a 'proper' sit start to New Dawn Fades. James did the sit to Captain Contact V9 in awesome dynamic style. To finish Derek sent a big line he brushed last weekend on the uphill side of the large boulder next to Captain Sassypants. It is currently unnamed and ungraded. Then it snowed.

New V11 at Flock Hill

Pete the Radness has sent the famed project Sharma's Prow,which now belongs to Pete and is called Interstellar Overdrive and is fat at V11. Good job Pete! In case you were all wondering, yes, he did campus it.

In other news James Morris managed a stylish repeat of a recent Pete problem Lost for Words V9. James didn't like the mono so much so he moved off the sloper... well you would wouldn't you?

Signing Out

Some of you may have noticed that updates on this blog have come to a screaming halt. This is not because I have become even more slack than usual, but becuase I no longer reside in New Zealand. I have chosen to undertake a wee climbing trip around the world and will be stopping off in places such as Thailand, UK, Switzerland, France, and Spain.

If anyone is keen to take over the administraion of this blog to update it with new problems and updates I would be more than happy to hand it over. If this sounds like you then please send me an email at crankage@gmail.com

Au revoir!

Flock Hill Guide

The locations of these boulders are VERY ROUGH and ment only as a starting point for you to look for the problems. At some stage I hope to provide a map with slightly better descriptions, but for the moment please bear with me...

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Superman	V11		up and left of the trifecta boulder

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Apollo 10	V10		upper bell-boulder gully
Camp America	V10		mid bell boulder gully
Girl Power	V10		Boulders betwen Flock Hill & Dry Valley
Vapour Trail	V10		split apple field

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Hipster(ss)	V9		left of the bell boulder
Mayan's Runnels	V9	-	Lower trifector gully
Prince Tui Teka	V9		Boulder beside hundred times slab

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Captain Contact(ss)	V8		uh...captain contact gully
Captain Nemo	V8		Split Apple Field
Cosmonaut	V8		Split Apple Field
Disconnect Extra	V8		mid-left of trifecta gully
Hipster	V8		left of the bell boulder
Humph	V8	-	upper bell boulder gully
Ice Age	V8		left of split apple field
Mobeous	V8		lower-left from trifector gully
Porky	V8		Mid trifector gully on this boulder
Psychic Tealady	V8		upper bell boulder gully
Psycho Killer	V8	-	Beside hundred times slab
Super Shackti	V8	-	mid bell boulder gully
Sunset Arete	V8		right of bell boulder
Stoneworks	V8		mid bell boulder gully
The Roots	V8		mid-right bell boulder gully
The Vandal	V8		lower-left from trifector gully
unnamed	V8		upper-left split apple field on this boulder

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Captain Contact	V7		uh...captain contact gully
JP's Split Apple Dyno (ss)	V7		lower split apple field
Sunset Showdown	V7		Bottom of trifector gully
unnamed	V7		mid-left of bell boulder gully
unnamed	V7	-	split apple field on the captain nemo boulder
unnamed	V7		split apple field on the captain nemo boulder
unnamed	V7		lower bell boulder gully on the far left of this boulder
unnamed	V7		lower bell boulder gully on this boulder

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Mullet Arete	V6		mid-left of trifecta gully
Raven The Craft	V6		Beside hundred times slab
Underworld	V6		mid-left of bell boulder gully
unnamed	V6		upper-right split apple field on this boulder
unnamed	V6		split apple field

Climb	Grade	Rating	Location
Boy Power	V5		Same boulder as Girl Power

Preliminary NBS Results

While Jamie chills for a couple of days to recover from the madhouse of events that was the National Bouldering Series 2007, I thought I'd post a few of the results from the final round. Disclaimer: These results are by no means complete and may not even be totally accurate. They are composed from a vague memory that was partially distorted from drinking beer and not really paying attention at the time. I apologise in advance for any mistakes.

The day went off without any hiccups and a great time was had by all. Despite high temps and less than ideal conditions some managed to still tick off a few of the harder problems before the day came to an end. Despite Connie and Andrea "Jellybean" Barrueto both starting the comp around lunchtime, they both still crushed the opposition in the women's recreational division sending 51 problems each. The women's expert division was easily won by Mayan with Terezka coming in at second place. As for the men's expert division, Jan was thwarted from a clean sweep of the series due to local knowledge coming up trumps on the day. The category was won by, well...me, with Jan coming in at second place. Even with spending most of the day filming Stuart Kurth pulled out several V8 and V9 flashes, only put 5 climbs on his scorecard and still managed to secure third place. Nice one bro!

As for the series results, it was czeck city on the highest part of the podium as Yan and Terezka both won the overall expert Division. Liz came in second in the female expert, while Myself and James Morris placed second and third in the men's.

I'd also like to give a big shout out to Jamie, who's early mornings and weekends have been sacrificed for the past few months so we can all take part in the best outdoor competition in the country. Good job!!!

Spittle Hill NBS Comp, Now with 20% more boulders!

...or it would be if Jamie could cram in all the problems he wanted to. Orignally Jamie came up with a list of 170, but wittled this down to a total of 150 quality problems for your climbing pleasure.

The competition starts at 10am, finishes at 3pm, and has categories for all ranges of abilities. As there isn't too much shade at the hill don't forget your sunscreen and plenty of water!

There are also t-shirts for sale for a mere $35, but don't bring your eftpos or credit cards.

So don't miss out on New Zealands premiere 2007 outdoor bouldering event. Check out the official NBS site for more details. See you there!

Jamie (from England) on Beautiful Edges (V4).

Foreign Foto's

I've just been tipped off by one Simon 'Cragrat' Middlemass about a photo gallery that Cooper Roberts has compiled on www.climbing.com after his trip here last year. There are 32 photo's mostly featuring Bati, Randy (I think) and a few other dudes. Not too many of the photo's are particularly stellar, but it's worth a look none the less. You can check it out here.

A Climber on Achilles Last Stand (V12) - Photo by Cooper Roberts.

Flock Hill is a No Go

Flock Hill is now closed until the December 25th for lambing as stated by the land owner Mark Fraundorfer. So don't go up there or else!

For more info please refer to my previous post.

Kura Täwhiti Planting Day

On November 11th there will be a planting day at Castle Hill Basin with a number of local user groups (i.e climbers and the like) attending. I would like to encourage anyone interested to attend. See the email below:

Hi there,

As you will know DOC has been undertaking some restoration planting atvarious sites within the Kura Täwhiti Conservation Area. This year we have more plants to put in place and I think it would be an ideal opportunity to get people with various interests in the reserve together.

The proposal is to co-ordinate a joint planting day on Saturday the 11th of November. The groups/organisations invited to assist are climbers, Rünanga and Ngai Tahu, Castle Hill Community and DOC.

The idea [at this stage] is to gather at the reserve entrance at 10am on the 11th. There we would present an introduction to the day, and then proceed into the reserve. We hope then to be able to provide an overview of the importance of the reserve from the Rünanga perspective and would like a representative from the climbers to do likewise.

We'll then get along to the planting area[s] and get a briefing on this programme. If we have a few people - we'll probably try and run some interp tours - so that while some are planting - others are getting a guided walk round the rocks - with a special focus on the maori values of the site.

This is all draft and if you have some suggestions for the running of the day / climber input etc - please feel free to let me know.
We'll put on a BBQ lunch - pretty simple stuff. Plan for around 4 - 5 hrs of planting and then a wind up and travel home.

I'd like your comments and an indication of interest / numbers

Look forward to catching up with you

Best wishes

Wayne Costello

41174 Represent!

Fed up with sending the same old V9's and V10's the 41174 crew (Dave Kopp & John Palmer) flew down for the weekend to flex their pipes on a few of flock hills classic hard lines.

Me on Condor (V7).

The weekend began by warming up at the bell bouder. We stumbled across a cool little sit start that was put up by some British guy called Pete. We spent some time on the problem before unlocking a workable sequence that allowed John and I to send the V8 (which was pretty soft actually). Next we jumped on the problem 3 meters left of Sunset Arete called Condor (V7). John, Seb and myself quickly sent it, while the Dave thought he'd just jump of the top a bunch and see how big of a crater he could put in the ground. ;-)

Then came the business end of the day - Sunset Arete (V8). This is a super classic line that involves an overhanging prow, some of the best moves you'll ever find, and lots of them. It's a problem that Dave, JP, and I had wanted to do for a along time, but due to the quantity of boulder mats needed, we'd never gotten round to it. Seb slowly dished out the beta as we all got increasingly higher. Half an hour later and...BOOM-SHACKA-LAKA! I got the tick! Quickly in toe, was Seb, Dave, and after a couple of cookie times, JP, giving us the team send on one of the best V8's in the basin.

Sebastian checking out Dave's booty on Sunset Arete (V8)

Not wasting any time JP then methodically moved on to the next climbs on his list and quickly dispatched Cartman (V8) and The Roots (V8). After pottering around on Mobeous (V8) for a while Dave and I headed up to the top of the field to meet up with the others. We then had a play on Porky (V8) which involves a campus to a throw to a runnel. JP unlocked a workable sequence on this which we used to thrash our self with for a while. Just after Seb gave us a demo I used my last layer of skin to top it out. I used to think this problem was rubbish, but now that I've finally done it...it's not so bad. ;-)

The plan on Sunday was to head out and deal to some unfinished business, but despite the warnings from some Japanese boulderers in Springfield we drove all the way to Lake Lyndon in the pouring rain before we did a prompt about turn (with the help of one handbrake) and returned to Christchurch. The only good thing about the ride out there and back is that we were privileged enough to to be entertained by JP's very impressive Mexican gansta impression of Cypress Hill for most of the trip back. Word.

Gallery

A bit of rock porn for your viewing please as kindly donated by Sebastian Lowensteijn