Takaka - Hang Dog - Paynes Ford

The first picture was taken at the top of a climb called Franklin's Tower on the Sea Grass wall in Pohara. It was about 27 m up and right over the ocean. Someone made a bell out of an old fire extinguisher and once you made it up the climb, you got to make a victory ring.

At Takaka (the town), Hang Dog (the camp) and Paynes Ford (the climbing): I made a lot of new friends, climbed a lot, ate really well every night and destroyed my feet. We camped at Hang Dog with tons of other climbers. It's a cool camp for climbers with a shower, bathrooms, a bunkhouse (if you want to pay more), camping areas, places for you to park your car and sleep, a fire pit and fridges. It's really close to Paynes Ford. Paynes Ford is the climbing area and the entrance is about 20 meters away from the camp. Most days we were up by 7:30 am, eating breakfast and getting ready for the day's climbing. Then we'd head out with a packed lunch and climb for hours. We'd get back to camp from early to late afternoon, depending on how hot it was and how tired we were. Once we got back to camp we'd all jump into our bathing suits and go for a swim in the river at one of the several water holes. Afterwards, we'd mosey back to camp and cook up a large and healthy dinner. Most of our days followed that pattern.

The climbing was intense and really pushed my abilities. I was climbing with people who were stronger, had more experience and climbed higher grades. So I'd end up top roping those higher grades more often than leading the lower ones. I did my first solo climb, a few days ago, which means no rope and no clips, just free climbing. John and I started a new game called rock walking. The river is so clear that you can see underwater so we decided to take rocks to weigh us down and run along the bottom of the river. It is very similar to what they did in Blue Crush or the Guardian. This later prompted us to wish that we could breathe underwater so we tried to devise a super long snorkel out of tubing and empty bottles. This didn't work at all. The depth of the water was so great that it caused a extremely strong suction through the tube. This made it impossible for me to draw a breath and pull the needed oxygen down the length of the tubing. One night we tried to find the cave system that exists in the nearby forest. We failed to find it and I'm not sure why we thought we needed to look for it at night. We ended up finding glow worms on one of the tracks on the way back to camp. At camp I ran into a girl who grew up in Asheville, NC. Then I ran into a girl named Mallory that went to UNCA, a year behind me, and was in the Math Program. Then one night when we were at the famous Mussel Inn I ran into another girl who grew up in Asheville and dated a guy that I knew from UNCA. It's a really small world, but Hang Dog has the chilled out hippie community vibe and I'm not entirely surprised that Ashevillians would feel a draw to kindred spirits here.