It hurts to laugh: Our first week at Castle Hill New Zealand.

Kaikoura coastline

We've been in New Zealand two weeks now. The first week we drove from Auckland down to Christchurch. The weather was quite rainy mixed with some sun. Every time we decided to just drive because the weather was bad it would clear up and every time we tried to do something touristy it started raining. This culminated with us waiting in Christchurch for two days in the rain while it snowed at our destination: Castle Hill. We still saw some magnificent scenery such as the famous Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. We also enjoyed a nice hike around Kaikoura and saw baby seals. We hiked in a redwood (not native) forest that was small potatoes compared to Muir Woods, but was very pretty nonetheless.

hotsprings in a redwood forest

unusual hitchhiker

Mt Doom. Stupid electrical lines. i'll be removing you in photoshop later...

Read here if you want to know why we bought $2000 plane tickets to Singapore with no intention of going there....
While in Christchurch we took care of getting our plane tickets to Singapore refunded. This little story goes like this: We arrived at the Melbourne airport with every intention of going to New Zealand. As we checked in the front desk clerk asked us for our flight information showing our flight leaving New Zealand (nothing unexpected so far most countries want to see your itinerary). She looks it over and says "ah I see you have a 12 hour lay over in Sydney Australia on the flight from Auckland-Sydney-Bangkok Thailand. This is over the maximum 8 hour layover. You need a transit visa" We agree that this is true. She asks us for our transit visa that will allow us to stay in Sydney for this time period. Now, we knew we needed a transit visa for this leg of the trip, but we couldn't get a transit visa while in Australia (dont ask me why, you just cant) and assumed we could do it in Auckland NZ. She says "well I can't let you leave for new Zealand unless you have a visa for this layover in Australia" and so we say "we need to be in new Zealand to get a transit visa for Australia" and she says "well we can't let you go without one". Obviously we are freaked that we can't get to new Zealand and we can't leave Australia. True example of a catch 22. So she offers a solution: "if you buy two fully refundable tickets out of new Zealand to a country you don't need a visa for we can let you into new Zealand. can you put $2000 on your credit cards right now? we say "sure, we can do that" and so we get two one-way tickets to Singapore. And so they let us into New Zealand where we spend $50 get our transit visas for Australia and cancel our tickets to Singapore. All told we spend about $200. We didn't intend to, but at least we made it. Phew that was a close one. Crazy bureaucracy.

Now on to the climbing. We arrived to see snow all over the boulders our first day. In fact, they had only opened Porters Pass 5 minutes before we went up. So, with no hope of climbing we went and camped at craigeburn (the climbers camp) the next day we went to the boulders and proceeded to get schooled on every possible grade. We fell off of v0s and found impossible v2s. It was humbling and even though we knew it was coming it still stung our egos. I was wondering if my ambition to do a v6 here might be a bit optimistic.

Cassie palms and smears trying to get up Ocean v6

a pockety v3 at Spittle Hill

after 20 minutes of confusion Matthew finally figures out how to get up Snail v4

Our second day went a bit better than the first and a few v3s fell though they still felt really really hard. I was so sore that it hurt to sit up, and even walk. We were sore in places we didn't realize we had muscles. Now that might not seem surprising, but remember we're been bouldering for 4 months now. You'd think we were in shape? Not for this style apparently.
Castle Hill is world renewed limestone bouldering. In fact, its one of the few limestone bouldering areas in the world and is by far the most famous. It gets much notoriety for being quite slick rock with very technical climbing. Small feet and slopey hands are common making for many falls from simply slipping rather than from fatigue. So far, we definitely see how people consider this area difficult, but maybe thanks to this area being such a late entry into our trip we've got more outdoor climbing skills to help out our technique. Many of the climbs we have done at first seem impossible with basically no hands or feet to get off the ground with, but once your start learning how to press and smear they go from impossible to possible in a few minutes. Much laughter is often present with the first few tries as well as saying things like "this is impossible", "there's no holds", "i don't understand this thing". Usually that gives way to sending, but sometime we can't find the beta and frustration occurs with much swearing. For example Cassie did a heinous v4 mantle that I still haven't done. It's just one move, throw your leg up on the rock and press it out but wow does it feel hard.

Quantum field

Terms that need explaining
(from Wikipedia)

Mantel: A move used to surmount a ledge or feature in the rock in the absence of any useful holds directly above. It involves pushing down on a ledge or feature instead of pulling down.

 Beached Whale: A not very graceful way to Mantle up onto a ledge involving flopping your belly onto it and squirming up onto the ledge. Example: Matthew's Technique. Pictures coming shortly...

 Our third day things actually started to go well and even more climbs around v3 were completed such as the at first confounding "left buttock" v3 and "snail" v4 also Matthew sent "Misfit" v6 which is so far the hardest climb we've done. Yesterday we spent our first day at Flock Hill. Flock Hill is a 45min walk each way up hill (feels like each way) given the long approach many of the climbs are much less polished from climber traffic and are therefore more fun to climb. We did a bunch of good things there and found some projects to go back to such as "Mobius" v8 and "Captain Nemo" v8 as well as many others. It's a beautiful location and we had a wonderful day. Well that about wraps it up from here. As usual we'll post more when some climbs go down which will hopefully be soon.

the view from Flock Hill

Flock Hill - Cassie enjoys superb limestone huecos

i'll take a jug please. Matt highstepping on a slab at Flock Hill.