There are many different types of climbing holds. Some rock types are characterized by a certain type of hold - and without a doubt for New Zealand limestone - it's the sloper. Everyones favourite type of hold is the jug. This refers to anything that is large and easy to hold (like a jug handle). Unfortunately, they are reasonably rare, although the Blue Mountain sandstone seemed to be blessed with more than its fair share of them.
In Finland we climb granite and are mainly on cracks and crimps. I love climbing cracks, Anni hates it. You simply stick your hand in, contort it to a different possition and pull away. Crimps are small edges. They look tiny, but tend to be sharp and as we would say "positive". Think about pulling on the door frame, with a little training and strong fingers you can perform pull ups on surprisingly small edges. As I said we climb granite and are mostly using cracks and crimps - I wouldn't want to say that we are good at them, but perhaps we can say they are our best holds.
We also climb indoors on plastic, and plastic prepares you well for some of the other types of holds - pinches and pockets. Infact, anyone who climbs indoors regulary also becomes remarkably proficient in putting two fingers in a rounded hole and pulling on them. I don't know anyone who likes pinches. I don't expect anyone to write a comment claiming that they do. Normally, one can avoid them but the route setters of indoor problems aren't so kind and by climbing indoors you get OK at pinching all manner of strange knobs.
This brings us to slopers. These are often large holds, sometimes they look like jugs but when you put your hands onto them you soon realize that there isn't much to grip. Imagine half a football stuck to the wall. Imagine trying to pull on it, you're not doing a bad job of imagining New Zealand climbing. Now, if we had read our own advice we could have practiced them indoors, but they have been something of a nemesis to us and we had managed to avoid them. With this in
mind, we nervously went climbing in Takaka.
We'd heard that Payne's Ford was THE best sport climbing crag in New Zealand. We'd also heard that it was steep (in most places overhanging) and the climbing was mainly on slopers. We were told about the Pohara sea cliffs and that the climbing was more like "sloping edges". With this in mind, we tried Pohara first.
We had a pretty successful morning getting up 6 routes, each route felt better and we would have continued except the crag came into sun and with the temperature in the 30s - two pasty Northern Europeans didn't stand much chance. The sloping edges were far from reassuring but with the occasional pocket or pinch thrown in we got up several F6a+ routes.
With this increasing confidence, I announced that I'd try one of the overhanging routes as at only 6b - it couldn't be sloper after sloper. It could and it was. With just one rest on it, I pulled the ropes, left the draws in, rested for 5 mins, looked at the shade retreat from the route and claimed that I'd go for the red point. No such luck. After another rest on the third bolt I stripped the route and was prepared to leave the crag when Anni spotted a line. In the near blinding sun on a sweltering day, she found a route where the bottom two thirds seemed to be in at least partial shade. She charged up this with great speed only to come stuck where the sun blasted the route. I managed to finish it with sweat dripping from my brows, my sweaty fingers grabbing the sloping edges for all they were worth and my swollen feet slipping in my now saline lubricated shoes. Other people arrived, but for us there was no way we could climb anything more. We headed to the car, set the air conditioning to full and decided to get up earlier the next day.
The Pohara sea cliffs.
A typical insecure slopey edge.
Other parties join, regardless of the blazing sun.We'd heard that Payne's Ford was THE best sport climbing crag in New Zealand. We'd also heard that it was steep (in most places overhanging) and the climbing was mainly on slopers. We were told about the Pohara sea cliffs and that the climbing was more like "sloping edges". With this in mind, we tried Pohara first.
We had a pretty successful morning getting up 6 routes, each route felt better and we would have continued except the crag came into sun and with the temperature in the 30s - two pasty Northern Europeans didn't stand much chance. The sloping edges were far from reassuring but with the occasional pocket or pinch thrown in we got up several F6a+ routes. With this increasing confidence, I announced that I'd try one of the overhanging routes as at only 6b - it couldn't be sloper after sloper. It could and it was. With just one rest on it, I pulled the ropes, left the draws in, rested for 5 mins, looked at the shade retreat from the route and claimed that I'd go for the red point. No such luck. After another rest on the third bolt I stripped the route and was prepared to leave the crag when Anni spotted a line. In the near blinding sun on a sweltering day, she found a route where the bottom two thirds seemed to be in at least partial shade. She charged up this with great speed only to come stuck where the sun blasted the route. I managed to finish it with sweat dripping from my brows, my sweaty fingers grabbing the sloping edges for all they were worth and my swollen feet slipping in my now saline lubricated shoes. Other people arrived, but for us there was no way we could climb anything more. We headed to the car, set the air conditioning to full and decided to get up earlier the next day.
At 06.30 I was prodding Anni awake. Although we were on holiday, I was determined that we get an early start, afterall if yesterday was anything to go by, at 10.00 it would start to get uncomfortable to climb. After some delay, We were at Payne's by 8.00am and staring up at a wall, without sloping edges but with true slopers, interspersed by a few pockets and even fewer crimps. We started with some small lines and with considerable umming and ahhing we both knocked off a 5+ and 6a. Just like yesterday, I spotted an overhanging line, that was again only 6b. Again I thought, at 6b there must be proper holds. After a few wild moves I'd climbed up past the second bolt and to the lip of the really steep ground, I had to pull over and on to the mere vertical but no matter how much I searched I couldn't find anything other than slopers and I couldn't pull on the slopers. After a rest, I found the same slopers and still couldn't pull on them. After pulling on the quickdraw, I got a little higher and found more slopers and couldn't pull on them. Remembering the advancing sun of yesterday, remembering that we were on holiday, that we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves and that it's no fun to hold the end of a rope when someone is blatantly not climbing an overhang, I retreated leaving a carabiner in place. Whoever climbs the route and pulls on the slopers above is welcome to it.
After some reappraisal it seemed like on both days we'd been doing well until I had decided that I could climb overhangs on slopers, and if we just avoided the overhangs we'd be OK. We finished the day with a great two pitch climb on near vertical ground with a difficult crux pulling through a small bulge (of course on slopers) and an endurance 25m line where virtually every hold was (as you can no doubt guess) a sloper. At the end of two mornings, there was no doubt that we improved. There was also no doubt that our forearms ached and a more relaxing activity was needed - we were going wine tasting.
We had a pretty successful morning getting up 6 routes, each route felt better and we would have continued except the crag came into sun and with the temperature in the 30s - two pasty Northern Europeans didn't stand much chance. The sloping edges were far from reassuring but with the occasional pocket or pinch thrown in we got up several F6a+ routes. With this increasing confidence, I announced that I'd try one of the overhanging routes as at only 6b - it couldn't be sloper after sloper. It could and it was. With just one rest on it, I pulled the ropes, left the draws in, rested for 5 mins, looked at the shade retreat from the route and claimed that I'd go for the red point. No such luck. After another rest on the third bolt I stripped the route and was prepared to leave the crag when Anni spotted a line. In the near blinding sun on a sweltering day, she found a route where the bottom two thirds seemed to be in at least partial shade. She charged up this with great speed only to come stuck where the sun blasted the route. I managed to finish it with sweat dripping from my brows, my sweaty fingers grabbing the sloping edges for all they were worth and my swollen feet slipping in my now saline lubricated shoes. Other people arrived, but for us there was no way we could climb anything more. We headed to the car, set the air conditioning to full and decided to get up earlier the next day.
At 06.30 I was prodding Anni awake. Although we were on holiday, I was determined that we get an early start, afterall if yesterday was anything to go by, at 10.00 it would start to get uncomfortable to climb. After some delay, We were at Payne's by 8.00am and staring up at a wall, without sloping edges but with true slopers, interspersed by a few pockets and even fewer crimps. We started with some small lines and with considerable umming and ahhing we both knocked off a 5+ and 6a. Just like yesterday, I spotted an overhanging line, that was again only 6b. Again I thought, at 6b there must be proper holds. After a few wild moves I'd climbed up past the second bolt and to the lip of the really steep ground, I had to pull over and on to the mere vertical but no matter how much I searched I couldn't find anything other than slopers and I couldn't pull on the slopers. After a rest, I found the same slopers and still couldn't pull on them. After pulling on the quickdraw, I got a little higher and found more slopers and couldn't pull on them. Remembering the advancing sun of yesterday, remembering that we were on holiday, that we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves and that it's no fun to hold the end of a rope when someone is blatantly not climbing an overhang, I retreated leaving a carabiner in place. Whoever climbs the route and pulls on the slopers above is welcome to it.
After some reappraisal it seemed like on both days we'd been doing well until I had decided that I could climb overhangs on slopers, and if we just avoided the overhangs we'd be OK. We finished the day with a great two pitch climb on near vertical ground with a difficult crux pulling through a small bulge (of course on slopers) and an endurance 25m line where virtually every hold was (as you can no doubt guess) a sloper. At the end of two mornings, there was no doubt that we improved. There was also no doubt that our forearms ached and a more relaxing activity was needed - we were going wine tasting.
Anni on a delicate slab
and me on another delicate slab
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