New Zealand Travels (March 22nd, 2003) Climbing Wall

"Back into Rotorua. Had a pleasant journey down to Waitomo chatting away to Amy and Donny (Dutch woman). Since we had all been told about black water rafting we all decided to give it a go. This is how it went down: got off the bus, paid and shot off in the most rickety little shuttle bus you could imagine. We put on our wetsuits and stashed our gear ready for the final journey to the cave. As we bumped along we got chatting to the guides and we introduced ourselves. It turned out that most of the people on that bus were to make up the posse for the next few days so I should have paid more attention during the sound off.

Anyway, we had a short hike down to the cave where we were kitted out with our tractor tyre inner tubes. One size fits all, unless you're a 5 foot nothing Japanese woman. (We also had a 7 foot English guy, Rob, on board so I should ahve taken a picture of the two of them together).

We were led down into the caves and it got dark pretty quick. After a few moments we were deep in the heart of the caves and gazing up to see the glowworms. They looked like tiny pinpricks of bluish green light. This light is used to attract small flying insects that wander into the cave and get caught on the long sticky line that stretches out below the glowworm. So we continued into the caverns down various passages with the water level steadily rising until we could finally place our tubes into the water. We turned them around so that we were facing backwards with our legs up on our neighbours inner tube. Once linked we were gently towed by our guides into the deeper waters in total darkness (we had to turn off our helmet lights). As we floated along we could hear the ever increasing sound of rushing, tumbling water. Our guides called out for us to expect a dunking of about 5 or 6 seconds as we were going to be pushed under a short sump. Eeek! OK, no problem - feel the fear etc etc. Nothing to panic about, just a short holding of the break, cold water glooding over me and two guides to drag me through the whole thing. Except they were just winding us up. Bastards!

What actually happened at the waterfall was a little worse.

A 10 foot drop into the darkness, backwards, with a tractor tyre inner tube held against your butt. Happy now. Yeah, right. But it had to be done so I held my breath and stepped off backwards...wooosh - splosh. I was down safe and sound. After that it was plain paddling, albeit in circles a lot of the time. We sang songs that we made up on the spot. I had a fine old time improvising to House of the Rising Sun.

The next obstacle that had to be overcome was the slide. In comparison to the jump it was a piece of cake and it wasn't long before we were all climbing the steep passage that led us back to the surface. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the black water tubing and it was from that point that our posse began to form.

In the evening we rolled back into Rotorua - the Smelly City - only this time I was dropped off outside the hostel called The Wall. This place was cool, really cool. In fact, it was so cool that it even had it's own climbing wall. Not some namby pamby 10m single route piece of shite. This was a full on International Rock Climbing graded complex. At least 20 routes, each with their own set of ropes, a chimney, numerous overhangs and even a crag tunnel where you can only use your arms and hang down. I immediately formed a lasting friendship with Chris Horton since it became apparent that we had a lot in common. He had done rock climbing before so he took the first climb as I learned how to belay which took about 5 minutes.

After that it was my turn, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was going to climb 20m off the ground on a grade 11 wall. And I was coming back down on a belay. Let me explain what happened the last time I was on a climbing wall with a belay...

I was 12 years old and in the school sports hall. The people holding the rope were the people I disliked the most in school, and they felt the same about me. More importantly, there was no friction lock on the rope, only 5 kids vaguely holding the rope and chatting among themselves. So I felt supremely confident making my ascent as you can doubtless imagine. Couple that to the curious vertigo that I was getting as I went cautiously up the wall. A couple of times I got stuck and asked to be let down. Nope - I had to go ever upwards. PE teachers can be so sadistic, but I suppose it was for the best. Eventually, I reached the first marker point, a small shelf wide enough for me to sit on. And there I made my stand, as it were. I was going no further and that was that. After a few yanks on the rope, and various calls of chicken etc they gave up and lowered me back down. Dangling there from a dodgy rope setup held by a bunch of drongos didn't instill a great love of rock climbing in me so I shied away from the school climbing club and rapidly forgot all about it. A couple of times I messed about with short abseils but for the most part I hadn't climbed a wall in at least 15 years.

Until now.

I stared up at the wall arching up and up above me. I tested my rope, harness, belay and safety knot. Then I test them again. Then I started the climb. Hand grips and foot grips were a little greasy but nice and easy to find and use. I started to make rapid progress up and up keeping 3 points of contact at any given time. I negotiated a tricky section and glanced down - woah there, boy! Palms sweaty, knees wobbling and then deep gut wrenching spasms which slowly passed as I clung to my wall 45 feet from the ground. And there was still more to go. I looked up, steeled myself and pushed onwards.

Shortly after that mind twisting moment I ran out of wall and gave the platform at the top a good hard slap so that Chris would know I was finished. Well not quite finished. There was still the small matter of letting go of the wall and totally trusting the rope and harness to hold me up in the air while Chris lowered me back to earth and safety. Slowly I leaned out, every inch a mile, every second an hour, until finally I was in position to be lowered. Step by step I descended, rope carefully controlled by Chris until finally I touched down pumped full of adrenalin and ready for more.

We spent about 3 hours on walls of varying degrees of difficulty tackling overhangs, chimney formations and the big finale - the 30m wall. By the end of the session we were totally confident in each others belaying to the point where I slipped off a face and spun about laughing as I was brought down. Afterwards we off to the bar upstairs (Outlaws) where we sat on bar stools in the shape of saddles. Another good day."