Paynes Ford Report

***Warning*** This post contains climbing information and jargon which most people will find boring or will make no sense at all.

Well, our weekend at Paynes Ford has come to a finish and we lucked out with the weather. The forecast had originally called for rain starting Friday and going all the way through until Tuesday...Not the case though...Saturday turned out to be a great day where we were able to climb in the morning until mid-day. Sunday we were able to get a full day and Monday...well I'll get to Monday in a bit...

Saturday - We arrived at Paynes Ford and started hiking up the DOC trail to the first climber trail which I though was about a couple of hundred metres away, but Robin immediately relieved me of guidebook and navigation duty and determined that the first trail was WAY back near the entrance. New Zealanders are all about the easy approach to crag. In the amount of time it takes to get to your first climb at Lion's Head, one would already have done three routes and be working on their first project of the day.
For my first warm-up I decided on a classic from the guidebook which was rated 16 (back in '91). Very easy route up to the slopers...slopers on a 16...wtf??? The limestone in NZ (in this area anyways) is very slopy and very few crimps. After lowering off the anchors, Robin roped up and found the climbing very different from home and very difficult. The slopers were very polished up top and she found it impossible. After I cleaned the route I did the classic slab route next to it "....Cream Poofters". If anyone ever comes to NZ to climb on the limestone here, bring your slab skills as well as your top-out on bulges skills. I did a couple more routes until the drizzle started and we hid underneath Rawhide Roof (which was to become Sunday's project). We met some "locals" and they gave us directions to one section of wall which was overhung enough to protect from the rain. We headed up to Tenuite Wall and happily is was quite dry...well dry for the climber but not the belayer (AKA...Robin). I ran up a great 20 and then immediately got on a 21 which I went up quickly until I lunged for what I though was the "victory jug". Turned out to be the "victory sucker hold" and the sloper spit me off for a beautiful 15-20 ft plunge...("Take...Nooooo, shit!")
After this route we packed up and headed out to the car and to get supplies for our evening stay at the climbers campground, Hangdog. Its a piece of property which sits right next to the DOC parking lot for Paynes Ford. A family has run this camp for years; essentially a "by climbers, for climbers" camp ground. There is tonnes of room for camping and a small bunkhouse which a kitchen and toilet facilities. It was very quiet this weekend but during the summer it is very difficult to find a place to pitch a tent. We met up with some NZ and Scottish climbers and chatted them up for beta and by 10pm we were back to our "spaceship" for night-nights...

Sunday turned into an unreal day. Sunny with a high of 20! PERFECT!!! We climbed with Richard (from Nelson) and we did a couple of the longer classics to warm up. Temple of Stone (18) is an awesome 27 meter warm up as is the route-I'm-not-quite-sure-what-the-name-is (20) just to the right of it is. The second route is a full 30 meters and as we were not using our rope, I bailed to the anchors of the previous route as I still had 2-3 meters to go I wasn't sure how new Richard's rope was...turns out I would have barely made it to the ground if I had gone all the way up.
Afterward Richard climbed a crazy runout route called "Elvis like in Takaka"...3 bolts...17 meters...I'm sure some of you can figure out the Elvis name based on that info...Thankfully he made it up sans fall and sans me launching into the woods to take up slack!
Afterwards I was off to my project....There is a route there called Rawhide (the roof mentionned above) and its a PERFECT ROOF at the start. Its a 15ft V4 boulder problem under the roof. The first bolt is at the lip and the landing is crap if you blow it...thankfully we train on roofs every day in Toronto. Scared the crap out of Richard as I ran out the roof easily. From there it lessens in steepness (only 45 degree overhang now...) until the 3rd bolt, then bring on the mantle top out on slopers. Did that very gingerly only to see then next bolt still 8 feet away...Now I'm on slopey slab where your hand-foot matching skills come into play..After I clipped that and a bit more slab I get to another bolt and smack into another mini roof...then another top-out...then more slab...where's the next bolt???? I can see the anchors about 10 feet above me but I still have to pull this crazy crack layback section (not technically difficult but after already having 15 feet of a run out and then this to the anchors.....yikes)...I pull this off and finally hit the anchors and clip in and yell to my belayer for slack...He (and Robin) can barely hear me and he thinks I say "take" and I almost get yanked right off the route. Thankfully they heard me the second time swearing at them and I was able to clip in. While cleaning the route, Robin had a mild heart attack when she realized how far run-out I was from the last bolt to the anchors...If you blew the anchors you'd take a 50+ footer and the route is about 65 feet long. Cleaning the overhang kinda sucked but got it done after taking both Richard and Robin for a bit of a drag....
After 2 more routes further down the crag, we hiked over to the Wall of Thugs where there is an AMAZING roof with 6 routes along it. I would loved to have given a go at one of them but there are no fixed draws and cleaning it would have required downclimbing (minimum grade of 23) or doing the route a second time on TR. Do a search on the web for pics of the route "1080 and the Letter G" and you'll see the awesomeness of this roof (and some cool pics of the no hands rest).

We were hoping for a third day today but as Robin was packing the van, her back seized due to a fall the previous day while hiking out. There was no way she'd be able to have a harness on a endure some of the falls that I would have probably taken today on the routes I was gunning for...so we drove right on out of Takaka and past Paynes Ford (waving bubye!!).

We now head down the west coast to the glaciers and afterwards we will be heading to Wanaka (I think) for some more climbing....

Wish I could post pics but the connections have been too slow and take forever...one day though!!!

Peace out!!