And the adventure continues...

So to pick up where I left off...

The morning after I returned from Hulk Hogan, I headed up to Paynes Ford in the Golden Bay, which is at the northern tip of the South Island. After 6 or so adrenalized hours in Pete's Hyundai Pony (we weren't sure if it would make it), we pulled into Hangdog, the climbers' camp, right next to the crag.

Hangdog is a pretty sweet place. It's a lot like Miguel's, minus the pizza. Lots of people go to Paynes and end up living at Hangdog for some length of time. Also unlike Miguel's, there's a cool town, Takaka, right up the road (not that Slade, KY isn't sweet...). They have a bunch of old bikes at Hangdog that you can borrow and ride into town. Hangdog is also in walking distance to all the climbing. So if you have a car, you could conceivably park it and not move it until you leave the Golden Bay.

Paynes Ford is amazing as well. It has a few hundred sport routes. The rock is limestone like Castle Hill, but it is quite different. There are actually holds at Paynes, rather than just featureless bulges. There are a lot of slopey ledges and crimps at Paynes and the rock can be hard to read, so that took a bit of time to get used to.

I spent most of the week there working on my fear of falling. Somehow, I had managed to become more scared of falling on lead since the last time I had been sport climbing outside, which had been several months before, except for the cave. So I did a lot of freezing up as soon as I would start to go beyond my last clip, usually locking off on some absurdly small hold, just standing there not moving. And when I finally starting letting myself take falls, I would let out these blood-curdling screams. By the end of the week, many people knew that it was me climbing around the corner.

A lot of the climbs are pretty run-out and the first bolts are often very high. I decided to work on my falling fear on one of the most run-out climbs at Paynes, Dave's Arete. The route is a super cool 24 (~5.11d) that works along an arete with good holds and really fun moves. The climb is probably, oh I don't know, 30 meters long with only 4 bolts. It's a long climb and it gets really pumpy in the end, probably because you're so afraid of falling. So pretty much everyone takes massive whippers off this route. And if you manage to make it to the top on your first go, you probably take the victory fall anyway. So needless to say, I took a couple of rather big falls off Dave's Arete. But admittedly, they were some of the most fun falls I've ever taken!

It took several days to get the hang of climbing at Paynes, so I wish I could have stayed longer. Two days before I left I started working on this really fun 27 called Creative Confusion. I kept getting stuck on this one move and I know I could have done the route if I had just a bit more time to work on it. So who knows, maybe I will make it back there before I leave NZ.

So sadly we left Paynes about a week later on a day with beautiful weather and drove back to Christchurch.

And with that, I will end there for now.