Payne’s Ford Roof Factor
April 16, 2004 10:06 pm General
The easter weekend was a pretty excellent trip, heading some 7 hours up north to New Zealand’s premier sport climbing crag, Payne’s Ford. Friday and Monday were public holidays here, so it was a super time to go, and with amazingly clear weather for the entire weekend we got some good climbing done. My first impressions of the crag weren’t all that great. It seemed like a poor attempt at a good French limestone crag like Verdon or Calanque, and felt a little uncomfortable at first on the Payne’s Ford slopers. The routes were quite short, although we managed to find a pretty sustained hand jamming, chossy 18 which was completely undergraded. On the second day we found a much better sector with some excellent routes – Andy topping the day with a flash of Rawhide, a 22 with a bouldery roof start.
On Monday we headed just south of Abel Tasman NP and took kayaks out around the bay – pretty awesome paddling, although was knackered after 2 hours with the heavy boats. Andy has joined us in the house while Patrick has left to live out in Hoon Hay. Have been climbing 3 days this week at the wall after joining for another 3 months. Since Andy arrived it’s been great to have someone to push my climbing a little more, and we’ve met a bunch of people at the wall putting up some great problems. I’m climbing as well as a guy who’s leading 25 or 26 [about 7b/+] – I really need to convert that to outside.
Major life milestone: I’m eating bananas again.
