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NZ Climbing Spots

magonigol

5-Mar-2010
2:51:45 PM

Just a quick one. Where are the best climbing spots in New Zealand?

nmonteith

5-Mar-2010
3:22:21 PM

I'll presume you mean normal rock-climbing rather than alpine climbing

Paynes Ford (sport limestone)
Castle Hill (bouldering limestone)
The Darrens (granite sport, trad and bigwall)

CanBeDone

5-Mar-2010
6:11:10 PM

For Boutique Sport:

Hanging Rock
Beautiful Valley
Wanaka

For Boutique Bouldering:

Elephant Rocks “Duntron”
Jarden Boulders “Quesstown”

freesolo

5-Mar-2010
6:15:12 PM

boutique bouldering accurately sums up the entire bouldering world of girls scouts who pretend they climb.

dmnz

5-Mar-2010
7:02:03 PM

You cant go wrong at Castle Hill and the Darrans

bel

5-Mar-2010
8:37:28 PM

Darrans are magic cant speak for anywhere else the snow has generally been the reason to climb in nz, why would you leave oz?!!

wallwombat

5-Mar-2010
8:43:10 PM

On 5/03/2010 freesolo wrote:
>boutique bouldering accurately sums up the entire bouldering world of girls
>scouts who pretend they climb.

That's very vitriolic.

Did a big, bad boulderer push your pram over or something? Why all the anti-bouldering angst?

Boulderers don't really do much harm. It's just another game climbers play. It's all climbing. It's all about going up.

Or sideways sometimes.

I see this all the time on the seppo site, rockclimbing.com . Especially on the trad forum. Some poor turky admits to going bouldering and suddenly the prison gates shut. Bang! He's in a world of hurt with every man, women and domestic pet harping on his sorry arse about how pebble wrestling isn't real climbing and how bouderers are f---tards and beanies should be outlawed. It's like Jerry Springer only you can't actually see the ugly rednecks.

Then some meek, mild old dude who cranks 5.12 trad, opens up and admits to enjoyin going bouldering and points out that some of the worlds greatest climbers, trad and sport, alpine, spent years bouldering their skinny arses off, until their tips bled.

And then the thread goes quite for a while.

I don't believe in climbing prejudice. If top roping is your thing, cool bananas. If you're an aid climber, all power to you. If your a spurt climber, that's OK too. If trad is your game, you go off. Boulderers keep crankin 100 o/o . Alpine dudes keep swingin those tools. Mountain dudes, the walk up to Booroomba kills me, I don't know how you do it. You're all tops.

It's all climbing and the climbers that I really respect are the ones who can do a bit of it all.

"Specialisation is for insects"

-Robert Heinlein

bel

5-Mar-2010
9:09:43 PM

Given i cant boulder to save my life and the hardest i have ever climbed has been on lead with the "wiggly things in" Cheers to that!!!!

wallwombat

5-Mar-2010
9:30:32 PM

That's cool. I wasn't having a go.

Everyone can boulder. Just don't look at any guides. Don't worry about grades. Just go to a bouldering spot and play. Find things that look good and try to climb hem. Make up stuff and climb and pretend you are a kid again. It's great fun.

I started climbing when I was about 18. I'll be 42 this year. The have been periods in my life when I haven't put a harness on for up to 4 years (once) and have spent significant time away from roped climbing. All through these periods in my life, when climbing has had to take a back seat to the rest of life, I have still bouldered. Bouldering was my way of still being a climber in times when it was hard to be a climber. I owe bouldering a little debt for that.

Long, multipich, trad routes are still my favouites.

So, to get this thread back on track, go to the Darrans.

I hear there is some decent bouldering there as well.

IdratherbeclimbingM9

6-Mar-2010
9:39:38 AM

On 5/03/2010 wallwombat wrote:
>bouldering blah blah (snip) ☺
... yeah, ok, but what have ya done on grit?
Heh, heh, heh.
;-)

wallwombat

6-Mar-2010
10:49:18 AM

On 5/03/2010 wallwombat wrote:
>>bouldering blah blah (snip) ☺

Merlot - 2 Wombat - nil

Karl Bromelow

6-Mar-2010
4:21:32 PM

Just in case you weren't asking for the definitive best but a more general pointer and if you wanted a little info on North Island as well as all the South Island stuff offered (South Island is rather more interesting though):

For sport fun and easy convenience, Wharepapa South area (Froggatt, Sheridan, Bayley's, Waipapa etc). Check out Bryce's at:

http://www.rockclimb.co.nz/

There's some trad fun to be had up on the flanks of Mount Ruapehu just below the Whakapapa ski fields and on Taranaki near New Plymouth (coastal-great surf).

There's a bunch of interesting limestone crags around Waitomo that are always being developed for sport. You can find climbers willing to spill the beans, working as cave guides at Blackwater Rafting in Waitomo amongst other companies.

There's some limited info on here too:

http://www.climb.co.nz/

Cheers, Karl

There are 12 messages in this topic.