Castle Hill

Just a fraction of the boulders in this field

Last Thursday, Josh, Tyler, Gabe, and myself drove to Christchurch, three hours north of Dunedin. We met up with our friend Jay from our program who's at school at Canterbury. We took a bus to a nearby beach with a bunch of his friends, got some tasty Indian food, and enjoyed a fire on the beach.

We were up early the next day for our most highly anticipated destination yet: Castle Hill. It was about an hour away, and we stopped to rent a crash pad and climbing shoes. Castle Hill is a well-known bouldering spot, but I wasn't expecting anything like what we found when we arrived. Massive boulders fields spread out as far as we could see, not to mention the surrounding mountain ranges. We climbed and explored all afternoon. We didn't have a guide book, so it was a little bit difficult to judge the difficulty of each route, but we weren't too worried about it, we were having way too much fun.

Anyways, I was fortunate enough to be with three experienced and skilled climbers, so I gladly followed them around and climbed (tried, at least) whatever they climbed. I didn't actually finish any real routes the first day, but we were climbing some pretty difficult stuff. Josh, Tyler, and Gabe are all pretty even when it comes to climbing skill, so we spent most of our time on routes of difficulty between V0 and V5. The current scale goes up to V16 I believe. We quickly found out that the ratings of outdoor climbs differed a lot from in a climbing gym. These guys could climb some V6s and V7s in  a gym, but we had out work cut out for us on most V4s.

Besides the sheer quantity of the boulders at this place, Castle Hill also has really good rock. What makes it so unique is the combination of slopey-ness  (referring to slope, I'm not sure how to spell it) and awesome pockets/jugs. In other words, a lot of the rock was reeeeally tough to climb - very flat and spherical with almost nothing to hold on to - while these big, awesome jugs - really nice, easy holds - came pretty infrequently. Also, the limestone was strong, so it wouldn't break, and it had good grip.

As I was saying, we climbed all afternoon until our fingers and forearms were raw and sore. There was a nice campsite about ten minutes down the road where we stayed. Tyler and Josh had been raving about their tarpitecture abilities, and they ended up making a pretty awesome shelter that covered their beds, as well as Gabe's hammock. I, on the other hand, conveniently forgot my sleeping bag at my flat(!), so I slept in the car. It was slightly colder and less comfortable than I had hoped, but at least I was protected from the sand flies - pretty much a smaller mosquito, but just as annoying. We made burritos with black beans, corn, cheese, peppers, onions, hot sauce, cheese, salsa, and cheese, and it was fantastic. We played a round or two of hearts and called it a night pretty early.

The next day was another full day of climbing. Don't worry, the pictures will come at the end. We found out that Castle Hill was also having a national climbing competition that day, which turned out to be a great coincidence. There were a decent amount of climbers who we befriended and watched some really cool climbs. They also had flags by 200 or so of the routes and a map that told us which route was what grade - a free guide book! We also met this cool dude named Jason who pretty much was taking two months off of work to climb at Castle Hill and other various places in the south island. He had a guide book, so he showed us around and introduced us to some fun, challenging climbs. We had a much better plan this day, so we quickly made our way through a bunch of different climbs. Unfortunately, I went another day without a legitimate send (pretty sure 'send' is short for 'ascent', but I also believe it's spelled 'send' - it's a noun and a verb, "Awesome send, dude!" and "I'm totally going to send this route right now."), but I was constantly in good spirits. Another cool aspect of this place was that it wasn't just bouldering, you could easily walk/scramble up to the top of most boulders, so I was always on the move, checking out all of the views.

By about three that afternoon, we were pretty exhausted, so we decided to check out Cave Stream. The title is pretty self-explanatory, it's just a stream that goes through a cave. It's supposedly a pretty cool place to go caving, so Gabe and I (super enthusiastically) convinced Josh to tag along while Tyler read in the sun (lame). So the three of us headed into the cave with our headlamps, water up to our chests. We got about 10 meters in before it started getting dark. Also, you should know that I have a pretty large fear of deep, dark water, and specifically water snakes, so this was a big thing for me, facing my fears and everything. I even lead the way! So about 12 meters in, Gabe screams, freaks out, and scrambles onto a nearby rock out of the water. Obviously, I do the same, and Josh is a ways behind us,  still out of the water. So there's a lot of yelling and general freaking out, and we learn that Gabe spotted an eel brush against his leg. Long story short, we never got past that 12 meter mark. On our (shameful) walk back to the car, we passed a few families, small children included, who were coming out of the exit of the cave, all smiles. Gabe and I vowed to make it all the way through the next time we come to Castle Hill.

Anyways, we spent the night at that same campsite, enjoying pasta, peppers, onions, and cheese for dinner. Our new friend Jason showed us some awesome videos on his iPad of some professional climbers climbing at Castle Hill. It was pretty cool to see the pros climbing the same routes as us.

The next morning, we decided to climb for a few more hours before our drive back. We spent two or three hours on one boulder that morning. Probably the highlight of my trip was our send-train on a cool V1 (send-train = we all sended the route one after another without fail), which marked my first successful route of the trip! I ended up finishing two more routes that day (two V 0's) to top off an extremely successful trip. Other highlights include Tyler's first V4 (followed by two other V4's that day and three V3's) and Josh and Gabe sending an especially tricky V4 called Curvature.

Much of the drive home included making plans for our return trip. Finally, pictures!

Gabe and I, just chillin

The first boulder we climbed - getting into that leftmost 'hole' was actually a V3 (or V4, I can't remember...)

View from the parking lot

Bryce was raving about this Creme Soda, and it lived up to its expectations. Delicious.

So... many... boulders

Gabe hanging out, Tyler scrambling up to meet him

Josh on a tough V4

Slapping to the top!

Success.

A crimp-filled V3 (lots of little holds and pinches)

A very fun V3 lay back crack

T Pain nearly flashed this (finishing it on your very first attempt) 

Beautiful morning

Our friend Jason climbing a really tough V4 called the Lung Dyno - his right hand is attempting to get some grip on an extremely slope-y top out. 

I wasn't as successful as Josh on this route, but Tyler and I managed to jump (called a dyno, short for dynamic move) and catch that big jug that Josh is about to grab.

A few more pictures from Josh, T Pain, and Gabe via Facebook:

Another cool view of the V3 Crack problem

Halfway up a V3 route called the Lung Arete, potentially the only proof that I actually climbed this weekend... I take most of the pictures...

Tyler spotting Gabe on one of our first successful V4's while I stare blankly at rock