Climbing at Whanganui Bay

My first outdoor climbing experience! Well I should correct myself, my first top roping climbing experience. This was the one trip I couldn't wait to go on since I joined the alpine club at the beginning of the semester. The trip started on Friday evening when we drove up to Whanganui Bay which is one of the bays of Lake Taupo and the best climbing spot on the North Island. We set up camp in the dark so we didn't really get to the see the site well that night, but we were excited about the next day anyways!

We woke up Saturday morning and crawled out of our tents to constant rain. And constant rain = no outside climbing. We had an awesome pancake breakfast courtesy of Jackson and we headed up to Taurangi, a town nearby, to do some climbing on the indoor wall. The road to get to Taurangi was quite an adventure and there were a couple of times we nearly got stuck in the mud, but we made it. At the gym we climbed many different types of routes and we even learned how to lead climb, which is the first climb to go up on a route and set the rope up. In the afternoon it stopped raining so we decided to try and climb outside some. The rock was a little slippy at the bottom, but not too bad. The first route, Lizzy, Richard, Chelsie, Sam, Christy and I all tried and successfully made it to the top. I then tried to lead climb on another route and was not so successful. We headed back to camp and had an amazing chili dinner in front of a huge bonfire with some good German beer and chocolate for dessert. The night was freezing however, and I barely slept because I was too busy trying to keep myself warm. I had to go to the bathroom around 2 in the morning and it was a very unpleasant experience.

The next morning we had more breakfast and headed straight to the climbs. The day before we had climbed in a region called the Plateau and this day was for climbs further out next to the water. Some of the climbs I did were climbs with a special move at one point in the climb. The first two climbs were fairly straight forward and then I did two climbs called Jungle Judy and Wet Dreams (I don't know who gets to name these) and they involved a heel hook and mantle for Jungle Judy and a lean-back crack climb for Wet Dreams. I also got to practice repelling for the climb that was to come next...

I had been looking forward to this climb since I heard someone talking about it at a meeting. The climb is called the Tibia because it looks like the human leg bone. It is a 60 meter 3 pitch climb, which means that the rope has to be used three times. This also means that once you start climbing, you can't come back down. No Quitters! I climbed with two other good climbing guys who had never climbed it either. The first pitch was about 22 meters and involved shoving myself however I could up a very narrow chimney through some ledges. About 4 or 5 meters up this climb there is also a human skeleton from a Maori women that was left up there because of an infectious disease she had. It was very surreal to climb up past this skeleton that was over a hundred years old! The second pitch was short, about 10 meters, and involved coming out of the chimney to go around. Easiest pitch by far because there were some awesome hand holds! The third pitch was a very wide chimney that went up about 18 meters or so and there was a point were I had my back against one side and my feet could barely touch the other when my legs were fully stretched out! I made it up successfully and the view from the top was absolutely amazing! The lake was very clear blue and you could see the bottom in some parts. It was a beautiful day and made the 60 meter climb up totally worth it. If there was something more fun than climbing up it was probably getting down. From the top, one by one, (after we had some chocolate) we each repelled down the 60 meters by ourselves! It was scarier walking off the back of the cliff backwards than it was jumping out of the plane. Once I had lowered myself past that point I could just cruise down at my own speed and enjoy the view as I pretended to be Spiderman. After we had successfully repelled down we packed up camp and headed out. To continue the tradition we stopped at a hot pool in the area and took a little relaxing dip. I could definitely feel all my cuts and bruises (the kiwis call it "rock allergies") from the weekend as soon as I go into the sulfur pools! What a fun weekend! I am working on getting pictures from Richard and will post them soon enough! Cheers!