First weekend in May- Drive to Napier in search of rocks. It is a beautiful seaside community, 2 hour drive from Palmy with no known climbing. Obviously the local gym rats NEVER leave the gym! Myt mate Claydon and I discovered at least 4 new spots (3 new bouldering areas and 1 MOTHER of a cliff) that were all clean, solid limestone. Sure, the areas need a bit of a clean up to make the access better.... but considering the lack of other stuff within 2 hours of home.... we are both TOTALLY looking foreward to the prospect of some cool new spots. It still baffles me that such good (virgin) climbing areas can be found here just by walking 30 seconds off a main road!
Second weekend in May- MUAC bouldering weekend. It was my "turn" to lead a trip for the MUAC climbers. Sure, I've instructed on them already.... but this was all me. I was able to book a hut on the same farm that "the airstrip" boulders are located on up in Waiotomo. It was a 5+ hour drive up on Friday night, and worth every kilometer. The weather was scheduled to be absolute POOP, but all 13 of the people signed up decided if nothing else it was a great exuse to go drink in a nice hut somewhere FAR AWAY from ol' Palmy. The gods obviously favored us on the trip as that when we finally got up there at 12:30am, the moon was out and the stars were shining. A handful of the "hardcores" and I were so exited that the rock was dry we each grabbed boulder mats and cold beers and went for a LATE night climb.... brilliant!
Saturday was a stunningly perfect day. People were happily climbing and falling and cursing and laughing. Bouldering is such a social acctivity as that everyone is right there at ground level more or less, and everyone is pushing one another to climb hard and have fun. I love it! After a full day, we headed back to the hut (5 minute walk.... ooooh) where I cooked up a massive feed of chili and rice, followed with cookies and ice cream. The evening entertainment was (besides a fair amount of beer) story telling, pictionary (drunk pictionary ROCKS) and various mind games such as word associations and other "think outside the box" puzzles.
Sunday rained. Not hard, but enough to make climbing not worth while. A few of us went down to "The Grot View Cave," which is a MASSIVE overhand 2 minutes from the hut for a last gasp attempt to get more climbing in on some very hard routes, then we helped pack up and clean the hut. We stopped in Taupo on our way back as that we had much more time than antisipated.... and went for a good 2 hour soak in the thermal river. Although the rain ruined the climbing.... the hot pool was definitely a welcome alternative.
So that's the update.... miss y'all!