The Learning Curve

I suppose it's time for another post. And as a warning to any of my loyal readers, this may well turn into a climbing blog by default, as pretty much all I've been doing is climbing. Which is great, I'm certainly not complaining.

So on that note, I've spent the last few weekends at Castle Hill and if weather cooperates, I'll be there this weekend as well.

Before I came here, I knew climbing at Castle Hill would not be easy for me. Though after a month and a half of climbing there, I'm starting to get a bit frustrated at my lack of progress. A good portion of the problems are mantles or at least end with one. I'm not very good at mantles, so I've been diligently practicing. There are two problems that I keep going back to that I'd love to finish: The Unrepeatable and Big Bubba The Buddha. I don't feel like I'm very close on Unrepeatable yet, but I know I can do Big Bubba. There are a couple of easier V4 mantles that continue to shut me down as well. So hopefully this weekend the wind will be behind my back and I'll be able to tick some projects off my list.

And in more positive news, I made some noteworthy progress at the Cave yesterday. My project of the moment is a route called Gorilla Grips. I got most of the way up it, which I thought was pretty good considering it's a 27. The individual moves are not so hard, it's just quite pumpy. So I think if I warm up as best I can (which is difficult at the Cave), I'll have a good shot at sending it. We'll see next week.

I think that's it for now. If I'm feeling inspired tomorrow, maybe I'll write a post about something other than climbing!

Hope all is well at home.

Life is Swell is Kiwiland

During the last week or so, I had been waiting for something really exciting to happen before I wrote a new post. While I didn't summit any glaciers or swim with dolphins, everything's been quite good here.

Classes started last week. For a moment I thought it might be nice to be in classes again, though after the first nice day I had to stay inside doing schoolwork, I thought differently. Fortunately, my class schedule doesn't seem like it will be too demanding, so hopefully there will still be plenty of time for climbing and other adventures during the week.

On that note, this past weekend, Peter took me to this awesome climbing crag in Christchurch called the Cave. It looks a lot like the Red River Gorge with its seriously overhung walls, only it's about half as tall as the Red. The Cave has some of the hardest climbing in NZ. The easiest climb is a 25 which is equivalent to about a 5.12a at home. So there isn't really any warm-up routes unless you climb 13's or 14's.

Check it out: http://mojozone.co.nz/climbing-location/the-cave.

Needless to say, I got pretty worked at the Cave. Luckily, it's only about a 20-25 minute drive from campus, so I'm going to try and make it there at least once a week.

I've been able to meet a bunch of local climbers, mainly people who go to UC and are part of the climbing club. A couple of us did some serious bonding the other night when we had a go at Peter's new "squeeze box." Peter needed a coffee table, so he decided to build one and make it a squeeze box as well. He defines a squeeze box as, "a box that you twist your way in and out of the helps practice getting out of cramped spaces, like when you're caving."

I was a bit skeptical at first as I was unable to visualize what this thing looked like. Turns out I was quite adept at twisting myself through the squeeze box.

Some of my friends weren't so lucky.

Matt can't believe that he's stuck. My other friend got stuck in the box for nearly an hour. One of the rules of the squeeze box is that if you get stuck, you have to stay in it until sunrise when someone will dismantle the box. So he was pretty worried there for a bit.

I think it's homework time for me now, I hope everyone is well at home.

I just posted some more pictures to my Picasa page, so check it out.