About a week ago, I returned from a 3-week break from classes. I found it pretty insane that I only had classes for 5 weeks before having a pretty long vacation in the middle of the semester. Despite the fact that someone told me this was a "study break," I did what any sensible person would and went climbing!
The first weekend of break I went to this sweet bouldering spot a few hours south of Christchurch called Hulk Hogan. (Pretty cool name, I know.) Up until this point, I had only bouldered at Castle Hill while in NZ, so I was pretty psyched to climb at a new place. Before we got to Hulk, we stopped at a place called Elephant Rocks, which is like a mini Castle Hill. We all ran around for a few hours and did a ton of problems. A notable one was called something like Donald Duck. It involved mantleing a rock that is shaped like a beak.
After that we headed on over to Hulk Hogan. The whole crag is just one long overhung limestone wall. The climbing there is a lot more dynamic and powerful which was a really nice change from Castle Hill. My favorite problem there is definitely The Matrix, an 8 meter or so long V6 traverse. It's super fun with tons of heel hooks but is pretty beta-intensive, with a crux at the beginning and the end. When I went to Hulk for the second time a few weeks later, my friends and I worked The Matrix for several hours. After all our work, none of us were able to send one of the pumpiest boulder problems ever by the end of the day, but we certainly made progress.
I will continue the rest of my break adventures soon!
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