Mojozone

This crag illustrates the dangers of letting two under-employed local near-pensioners loose with a drill. Until this frenzied burst of choss removal and drilling the only noteworthy route on the crag was Ray's "Out with the Missus" although there were rumours of other developments. The archeological diggings did reveal hints of homo climberus activities but no clay tablets designating the routes were unearthed, so until proved otherwise, this will have to stand as the definitive document. All of the climbs are bolt protected and equipped with double bolt anchors.

Brand new Cleddau Valley Cragging guide is available now for download from the NZAC website.

http://alpineclub.org.nz/product/cleddau-valley-cragging

33 page colour PDF guide that comprehensively covers the 3 major crags in the valley: The Chasm, Babylon and Little Babylon.

CVC guide

Having just recovered from a palm sweating gmail chat session with NZ's dynamic climbing duo Max and Mayan (who are in California) we can report the following:

They have just completed the route Freerider on El Capitan.

It was hard.

They attempted to climb it all free in a single push and did extremely well, coming close to achieving this goal.

It was really hard.

The New Zealand Alpine Club will this weekend host a debate at their Annual General Meeting to discuss what can be done about the decline in mountaineering activity in NZ.

The debate is open to the public, so come along, it should be an interesting night!

There was some good coverage on Morning Report on National Radio this morning. For those that missed it, please follow the link below:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20091014-0852-Alpine_club_says_Kiwi...

Not content to rest on his laurels after his recently reported ascent of Achilles Last Stand (V12), Stu Kurth has kept the dream alive by also repeating Captain Sassy Pants Direct (V11/12) at Flock Hill the other day.

So far this report begs two immediate questions:

1. Will the Beast Kong ever be tamed?

and

2. What is a laurel exactly?

According to answers.com a laurel is:

A Mediterranean evergreen tree (Laurus nobilis) having aromatic, simple leaves and small blackish berries.

The Central Couloir on Douglas Peak saw an early September ascent by Alex Palman, Bruno Geldermans and Neil Hickman.  With ice conditions being more like frozen snow the tooling was great but the protection offered “gripping” leading with poor protection.  It also meant a long, cold descent on the north side to give the team a full 18 hour day.  This climb gave Neil ascents of the three classics, the Balfour Original Route on Mt Tasman, Heaven’s Door on Mt Hicks and Douglas Peak all in his “retirement” years.  At 67 years he reports there was to be no turning back on Dou

Word on the street (well, actually, amongst the boulders) is that Stuart Kurth has climbed Achilles Last Stand (V12) during a recent trip to the Castle Hill Basin. This fierce problem was established by Chris Sharma in 2005 and has since had just one repeat (from Sebastian Lowensteijn). It consists of just two desperately hard moves, a big throw from small pockets to a dish and then a snap to a good hold. He says he is ‘super stoked’ about the ascent, and justifiably so, we say, given the problem’s staunch reputation!

A recent grant from SPARC, the NZAC and the MEF allowed an Australian/Kiwi team of Adrian Laing, Scott Standen, Bruce Dowrick and Jon Sedon to travel to the Charakusa Valley, Karakorum, Pakistan. They climbed a new route on a huge buttress on the west side of K7 called Nafees Cap, 1000m of golden granite. The base of the new route was at 5000m and led on to 620 metres of new climbing, joining the original route, Ledgeway to Heaven. Unfortunately snow conditions on the upper low angle sections of LtH turned them around before the summit proper.