Rugby Weekend and Kepler!

It's been a few weeks since my last post - my apologies! I've been really busy with school.

Anyways, last weekend was the first weekend in a while that I've stayed in Dunedin. Unfortunately, that means I don't have many cool pictures, but I'll keep this part short. On Friday morning, I went to Long Beach with Josh, Tyler, Kemper, Claire, Sherry, and Andrea. Everyone started climbing and relaxing on the beach while Sherry and I went for a run. About an hour and a quarter later, we returned from the hilliest 12k of my life (we measured it in the car, so it's legitimate). It was tough but a lot of fun, not to mention we had hundreds of sheep to cheer us on. That afternoon we grilled at my flat - Stu cooked up some delicious lamb steaks, corn on the cob, and grilled carrots for the two of us, T Pain added some chicken breasts, and Sherry and Claire grilled some veggie burgers. Obviously, all of our meals were topped with aioli, the one real condiment in this country (although it's fantastic). We were also treated to some tasty raspberry margaritas via Sherry and Claire. That night, we went to the Highlanders game with our Arcadia program (free tickets!) Per usual, we were decked out in our Highlanders jumpsuits, face paint, and even managed to pick up some Highlanders flags at the game. Unfortunately, the Highlanders lost a close one to the Wellington Hurricanes, 23-19. We were the favorites, but it's not the first time we've disappointed this season - we're currently sitting dead last in the Super 15 league at 0-4. Regardless of the outcome, it was a lot of fun.

The next morning, Stu and I were up early and caught a bus for Lincoln (a few hours north) with the University rugby team for a few preseason matches. Since I've recently decided to hang up the cleats in order to keep my noggin in one piece, I wasn't playing, but it was fun to tag along, watch a lot of rugby, and meet the guys on the team. The Uni has four teams - the Premiers (the top team) A side and B side, and the Colts (under 21 team) Blues (A side) and Golds (B side). To be honest, I had no idea which team I was on the sidelines for, but I later found out it was the Colts Blues. Stu called pulled up to play on the Prems B team, because they were short players. The Blues lost, but the level and speed of the game was very impressive. Just to give you an idea of what rugby is like in NZ, here's a conversation I heard between our coach and his seven year-old son:

(The other team scored a try early in the game, but the son was busy practicing his drop goals and missed it)
Son: Daddy, how did they score?
Dad is busy getting the team organized and doesn't respond.
Son: Daddy, Daddy, how'd the other team score?
Dad (very casually): They had an overload on the blind-side scrum, so their eight picked it and popped to the wing who offloaded to fullback for an easy try.
The son nods, clearly understanding, and continues practicing his kicking.

Te be honest, I think the dad said something even more complicated, but I can't totally remember. This kid was probably better at drop kicking his size 3 ball than I am.

Anyways, the club had a good feed for us afterwords as we watched the Prems A win a really close match. We even took home a pretty sweet trophy. On the way home, we stopped at a bar to watch a Super 15 match and a Warriors rugby league match. It was a lot of fun getting to know the guys and watching more rugby than most could handle.

The following day was St. Patties Day, and campus was bumping by about 9:00am. I spent the morning cleaning the flat and making homemade mac and cheese (complete with peppers and peas) since Sundays are my days to make dinner for the flat. The mac and cheese was a success. Our flat had a small party that night with our neighbors that included some green beer and a kiddie pool-ball pit.

The next few days were spent planning for our next big trip - one of New Zealand's Great Walks, called the Kepler Track. I also had a paper for my Maori Society glass - proof that I'm actually enrolled in classes.

Anyways, we left Thursday afternoon - Josh, Tyler, Sherry, Claire, and myself - in Tim Tam (I think I've mentioned that we renamed our car, right?) en route to Te Anau about three hours from Dunedin. That afternoon, we hiked for about an hour (6k or so) to our camp site. It was right on the beach and beautiful. We set up our brand new $55 5-person tent from K Mart (totally works), and got dinner going on our super crappy stove that we rented from Uni. The water never 'technically' boiled, so we skipped the rice, and instead enjoyed our Mexican night complete with tortillas, DELICIOUS beans from a bag, sauteed peppers and onions, and cheese. Forgetting hot sauce was a big mistake. Other highlights included Josh's brilliant Icing of Sherry in her sleeping pad (with her own Ice, classic). Thirty minutes later, Sherry finished it. We hung out on the beach for the rest of the night, because it was absolutely beautiful out. Claire is pretty much a pro photographer, so we also had a lot of fun with light drawing (see below)! It was an early night, because we had a long day ahead of us.

Friday morning we ate a tasty granola-dried fruit mix with powdered milk (waaaay better than it sounds), and we left camp by 8:30am. The sign said we had ten hours of hiking ahead of us, but we know that those numbers are for n00bs. It took us about two and a half hours to get above the tree line, and we ate lunch at a gorgeous hut - PB & J, cheese, meat stick, apples. Almost immediately the views were fantastic, and they only got better for the next five hours. The entire day covered about 25k, but there was a good amount of elevation gain, so it was a fairly tough day. We peaked Mt. Luxmore and got some great pictures. We hiked for a few hours along a pretty cool saddle with winds over 40km/hr - windy, but nothing dangerous, don't worry. One of the highlights of the day was when Sherry and Claire surprised us with Lembas bread as seen in Lord of the Rings, wrapped in leaves and everything. It was both aesthetically pleasing and delicious. Anyways, we got into bug-ridden camp around 5:00pm. The sand flies were pretty crazy, and my feet and legs got dominated before I had a chance to throw on socks and long underwear. We ate pasta (2.2 pounds, to be exact) with peppers and onions. We had to force down the last few spoonfuls, but it was definitely satisfying. We played Hearts in the tent while Tyler read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I should also mention that Tyler slept outside both nights in his fantastic tarpitechture shelters - he also came out with the fewest bug bites...

After a 10pm bedtime, we were up in the dark at 6am, and were on the trail by 7am for what we expected to be a loooong day. Although we finished all of the elevation the day before, we still had 34k on flat ground to do. We ate lunch at a hut half way from our destination at about 11:00am. The next four hours included some combination of: complaining of how badly our feet hurt, sprinting for short periods of time in the hopes of forgetting how badly our feet hurt, lots of fun riddles(!), some contemplation about stopping about 10k short of our final destination at a parking lot we passed and hitchhike to the car, and, in general, enjoying each other's company. Well, that makes it sound a bit worse than it actually was, I suppose, but needless to say, it was a long, exhausting day, and the chicken, bacon, and ranch footlong sub from Subway after was unbelievable. Since we finished the hike before 4pm, we decided it would be better to sleep in our own beds than another night in the cramped tent, so we drove back and got back before 9pm.

The view from our tent.

The gang

Claire's attempt to draw me as a dragon..

More light drawing!

Josh and I having a light saber fight

Josh explaining everything geology to me.

As you can see, the weather was just dreadful the entire weekend.

I give Josh my camera for five minutes...

Facial hair update: No, I have not yet shaved this semester, nor do I plan on it. Dad isn't here to cut my hair, so that will probably just grow out, too.

Modeling?

Modeling. 

All of my friends are models!

Lembas bread!

This one and some others are Claire's photos - thanks Claire.

The next day, Sunday, I spent most of the day finishing my Maori paper, skyping Mom and Dad, making tacos for flat dinner, and, oh, I nearly forgot, watching the final six episodes of Game of Thrones season two. I've now completed my goal of reading both books and watching the first two seasons before the third season comes out in April 1st. Oh man, George R R. Martin is a genius.

This last week was pretty slow school-wise, but I went to my first Ultimate Frisbee practice, and I joined Josh and Claire's team, and we won our game 15-14 in epic comeback fashion. It was a blast. Other highlights this week: I bought sheets for my bed (well, just the sheet that goes on my mattress, I'm still sleeping in my sleeping bag), a found an awesome synthetic long sleeve South Africa World Cup 2011 shirt at a thrift store for $10, I chatted with Rizzo on the phone, and I skyped Bryce in Tejas.

Tomorrow afternoon Tyler, Sherry, Claire, and I leave for our ten-day road trip since we have next week off for mid-semester break. That'll be for next post. Thanks for reading!

<3

P.S. Go Gopher women's hockey. And GO WILD. Now if only the Canucks would stop winning, too.

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