Making a Break from the City and Doing a New Form of Climbing

August 8-12

This one won’t be so short, but I think you may enjoy it.

Ok, so at this point I was getting pretty antsy, as you may be as well reading this. It had been about a month since I got out of the Dunedin area and I felt like my time in New Zealand was slipping by far too quickly. I was determined to get out. And I have to say, I was far more successful this week than I expected.

On Tuesday I met with James (guy I went climbing with at long beach) for $3 lunch (best idea ever, I wish more places offered lunches as cheap and delicious) to discuss plans for the weekend. The weather was looking good for at least Saturday and we were both keen to get back into the mountains and do some mountaineering. Sadly though, I hadn’t had the chance to find a good book on climbing in New Zealand, so he’s talking about different mountains and I’m pretty clueless. So we made a vague plan A and plan B based on what the weather for the weekend.
Late that night I found out that a space opened up for me on Jaz’s midweek trip to Big Hut- I snatched the opportunity.
Wednesday at 4:55 PM, right when my English professor was finishing his lecture, I made my way with a full pack and mountaineering gear to the Tramping club gear room. Within the hour, I was on the road in Jaz’s car with four others and two full cars following us, for a short but decent night hike up to Big Hut-a lovely rustic cabin above tree level (in an area renowned for feeling like your in the Antarctic). It was a mere one-hour drive from campus. Soon 15 of us were all geared up and starting the 2.5-hour hike straight up hill. Despite the nip in the air, the hike was having me shed some serious layers. The sky was clear and beautiful, with a near full moon and the people were great company-including some Canadians and kiwi women I met on the Awakino trip.
Upon arrival at the cabin, Jaz started to make the mulled wine and everyone threw on his or her warm layers because there was no insulation or heat. In no time at all we were playing ping-pong, table bouldering, and body bouldering (that’s right, that isn’t a spelling error, I got the pictures to prove it). The later two have to be some of the best games ever invented. One you’re trying to get under and over a table without touch the ends or ground, the other you’re trying to over and under a (tall and strong) person. Sounds weird, but I have to say there’s nothing like body bouldering to break the ice. Though I suppose it may only work for tramping club types.
We were all up early the next morning, ready to enjoy that beautiful sunrise over the hills. Jaz was in search of some ice for ice bouldering, but sadly there was none to be found. This was actually the most mild winter weather he’s had up to big hut-just about every time he’s come it’s been in a blizzard and there’s a ton of snow. We lucked out on the weather, but unfortunately not on the ice. As you can see from the picture, Jaz got a little desperate about it.
After a leisure morning we hiked down and drove back to campus in time for lunch and for me to miss my second class of the day. I was on a roll with missing classes so I decided to skip the third one to play catch up on the homework.
So that was my first escape for the week. Friday evening I was leaving with James and Tom on a whole new adventure six hours from Dunedin and in the heart of NZ Southern Alps. Oh and I should mention: this is a whole new Tom, this one is the Tramping club’s gear room manager. To make life simple for the both of us, we’ll just call him Tommy. Anyways, Tommy, James, and I headed for Queenstown where we picked up Max and headed straight for the trailhead, arriving at about 11:00 PM; and so began our weekend adventure that got extended a little longer than planned.

Hikes and 'Climbing Adventures' to the Local Peninsula

August 1-7

Overall, the week was a complete wash out thanks to the four homework assignments due (it doesn’t help that I’m just not grasping some of the Maori concepts-it’s kind of hard to write an essay on noa or tapu when even the professor isn’t sure she completely understands them and you could probably do a PhD on each one).
I did have a break midweek and went to the New Zealand Alpine Club meeting with Jaz, where I meet a few people and got to watch a presentation on this woman’s travels in Northern India. The meeting itself was a bit entertaining, for apparently the elections are coming up and the president of the club was trying to convince others to run for his position so he’s not stuck with it next year (he mentioned that if you know how to heard cats, you’d be excellent for the position). I do love the social side of the climbing community.
Saturday I made it to Dunedin farmer’s market (supposedly the best in New Zealand) in the morning before heading off with Hannah in the afternoon to do a short hike up a hill that’s within walking distance of my house. Did I mention that I love Dunedin because there’s so many trails within walking distance? There’s the pineapple trek (which is the hike I just mentioned), the reservoir, Cargill (well that’s decently close I should say), Signall Hill, and the Botonical gardens (100 meters down the road from my flat)? After our hike, Hannah made Dave and I a delicious curry dinner (we gave Dave the hard work of peeling the pumpkin, so props to him for that).
Oh, Sunday was interesting. Tom (a climber from Maine that I met at the bouldering wall in Dunedin) and I went on a little ‘climbing adventure.’ We caught the bus at 9 AM to the peninsula. At the last stop we hopped off and with glances to the sky and fingers crossed for the weather to improve, we started our long (about 8km) walk to Lover’s Leap (a famed cliff ledge right on the ocean that’s suppose to have beautiful burly sport and trad climbs). Sadly, the fingers didn’t work and about 3 km from town on the dirt road we started to get rain and hail. We were about to turn back when a truck came our way and we were able to hitch a ride from this nice woman and her young son (coincidentally, also named Tom). She happened to be on her way towards Lover’s Leap-she and her husband own the farmland all around it.
Upon arriving to the trailhead of Lover’s Leap, we thought that the weather was finally turning in our favour. Oh how we were deceived. By the time we hiked to the top of the cliff ledge, the wind had a harsh, cold bite to it. By the time we climbed around to the bottom to have a closer look, we were trying to stick our heads around the hill to look at the wall, only to be pushed back by the hale pelting us in the face. My pictures are definitely not the greatest-that would be the hail you see on the lens. The red backpack in the other picture is Tom crouching down for shelter from the brutal wind. I’ve only experienced wind like this on top of mountains; it was odd to have them on the shore with no hurricane. We soon gave up and made our back up the slope and started a long walk back to the nearest town to catch the bus. About 2 hours into it, we were finally able to hitch a couple of rides that brought us basically right to our door steps-which was pretty awesome. At the end of the day, I just got my climbing done indoors at the bouldering wall.