So, continuing my story from the first part, we finished up at Abel Tasman and Marahau, and headed north into the Golden Bay. It’s only 50km to Takaka, but it takes about 1h to drive it. In short, the road is really ridiculous and twisty and curvy and what not. After going over the Takaka Hill (the crazy section of road), we made our way to the Hang Dog Climber’s Campground. The Hangdog is one of the coolest places I’ve been to in a good while, and a great little hippie hang out. We got there towards the evening, set up camp, ate a little bit, and then hung out with a bunch of friends that we were meeting up with there.

The next day, the climbing began! The Hangdog is conveniently located about 2 minutes walk away from Paynes Ford, one of, if not the best location for some sport climbing in the south island. It’s all limestone, and great quality limestone at that. Sweet as. Did some leading that day, as well as some top roping, and it was a good time for all. Don’t have too many pics from the climbing that day, but here we go.

The first three are from this super fun and pumpy 22 (.11a) that I top roped (as I didn’t think I could lead it, and the first bolt was rather high) called Go With The Flow. As I said, it was super fun, really pumpy, very technical, and had an awesome tufa on it.

The next picture is from a fun and super exposed 19 (.10a/b) that I lead called Fat Cats. The cliff that both of these climbs were on was positioned over another cliff, so on this climb you come out a little bit, and all of a sudden there’s nothing below you. Kinda scary, really fun.

After that I lead an ultra classic 27m 18 (.9/.10a) called Temples of Stone. It’s really really tall, and it gets scary up there, but it’s really not that hard, and it’s an all around classic climb. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of that one, but yea, it was good fun.

After we finished up with that climb, we went over to one of the swimming holes where there was a slackline set up over the water. I tried my luck, but alas didn’t do too well. I attribute that one to being freaked out (for no real reason), and the fact that after the first time I fell, I knew just how cold the water was (take your breath away type of cold). Also the line was set really loosely, which messed with my head a bit, as I’m much more used to a tighter line. In any event, here are a few pics of myself trying my luck.

Having failed at the slackline, we all went back to the Hang Dog and had some lunch. After lunch we made our way to another swimming hole along the river, this one featuring a super cool V4 roof problem called Acid Test, I believe. I gave that a go, and it was good good fun, but yet again, the water was super cold, so only jumped on it twice. Even so, lots of fun.

After spending some time down at that swimming hole, we made our way back to Hang Dog where we hung out for a while. We then drove over to Pohara, where there are some sea cliffs. These cliffs are huge, but the tops of the the cliffs are really chossy rock (low quality), so most of the climbs there are fairly short (~17m). Here are a few pictures of the area around there.

At that point we didn’t have a guide book (I ended up buying one the next day), so we kind of drove around a bit, and in our drivings we found a small harbour which had the coolest thing ever – a pirate espresso ship! This was an old boat of Jacques Cousteau’s which was now being used as a small coffee shop. Now just try to tell me that’s not cool… you can’t! It was super chill, and they had the best iced coffee I’d ever had – it was espresso poured over a scoop of absolutely delicious vanilla ice cream. Mmmm, soo good.

After having our espresso, we made our way to the climbing. We only ended up climbing one route, a fun 16(?) with a small roof. I didn’t lead it due to both time concerns and my being unsure of how I’d do on a roof, but I very well could have lead it easily. Don’t remember what that one was called at the moment (one of my buddies still has my guide book, so I can’t look it up), but it was great fun.  [Edit:] The route was called Woof Woof, and was a 17 (5.9).

We hung out and watched the sun set over the Golden Bay, and then headed back to Hang Dog, having just barely enough time to stop in the grocery store in Takaka to buy some more beans for another wonderful beans and rice concoction that evening.

That’s the end of this day. More to come in the next segment, which if all goes as planned, should be done within a day or two! Cheers for now.