Climbing!

A slightly more exciting week! Videos and stuff to follow once Doug finishes the edits but right now you've got some BIG FAT WORDS. As people close to me know, 'I'm a climber' and since white water boating will for the next month hold an unacceptably high risk of injuring my shoulder further, I've spent the last week dragging Doug around and going climbing.

So after a flying visit to Des and Doreen on monday night, we left Rotorua and blasted down to Wharepapa South, a small town more or less in the centre of the North Island. This was a small town in the New Zealand sense; five or six houses, a school (!) and most importantly, a climbing shop with a camp site. Eight bucks got us a place to sleep for the night, but the A4 printed guidebooks and Bryce's expertise were free so on his advice we headed with over to check out the local crag with dusk drawing in.

Spot the van! Froggatt Edge is undoubtedly a pretty cool crag, with grades ranging from 10 to 28... French 4 to 7c. Happily, it also dries super quickly. It was raining pretty hard as we drove up the farm track that leads to the car park, but by the time we'd unpacked all of our climbing stuff and walked from the van up to the crag, the faces were dry (even if the pockets in the rock that formed the holds were still a little wet). This meant that I could quickly work my way up a couple of 16s, or French 5s before it got dark. The shoulder was a little bit tender when I got up the next day, so I volunteered Doug for the first lead climb of his life, on the second day he'd ever climbed outside. Hero!

This was his third route of the day, a little 15m 14, which weighs in at French 4 ish. Climbed with only a small amount of terror, it was nonetheless a pretty strong lead.

Video of Doug and friends the Kaituna and a little more on climbing coming up in the next update!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug.