Michele Domaneschi may be a small man, but his penetration rockclimbing skills are legendary. Those participants in the Wellington Section’s recent lead climbing course received the benefit of his expertise, as well as those of Scott Taylor, Simon Chapple (in one of his last trips away before the shackles of fatherhood bite) and Mike O’Brien. The course was the brainchild of Scottie and Mike, as a follow-on for those rock climbers who may have done Summer Rock or its equivalent, who have been top-roping outdoors for some time, and wanted to make the foray into lead. The course consisted of three consecutive Wednesday night sessions at Fergs and culminated with a weekend away to Wharepapa, where our new-found knowledge of pulling plastic on lead, was put to the test on real rock, the ignimbrite at Smith’s Farm. The first session was a chance for those who hadn’t been climbing for a while to scrape the rust from the old brain cells as we ‘earnestly’ revised anchors at Scottie’s mansion in Manley Terrace. If you weren’t really yet in the rock jock frame of mind, learning about anchors whilst surrounded by climbing hardware and Manley Terrace’s own indoor climbing wall, soon ensured you were in the right head space. The second session was down at Fergs out the back and into some real leading. We learnt about bent and straight gate karabiners on quickdraws, assessing the route before a climb, buddy checks, racking up efficiently and sufficiently, clipping techniques, when and how to efficiently clip, climbing direction versus karabiner gates, and the perils of Z-clipping (a sure fire way to impede upwards progress, as the writer soon found out, although thankfully not on real rock). It sure was a completely different mind game than being on top-rope, and we were all instantly hooked on the buzz. The final Fergs session was the most important, namely lead belaying. The boys also ran an extra session at Manley Palace to brush up on our anchor skills, direct and indirect belaying, and escaping the system. The weekend of 8th and 9th November saw us head off to Wharepapa in the South Waikato. We did the AIC thing of hiring one van. One extra private car was also needed, and the occupants of that missed out on 7 hours of Simon Chapple humour, punctuated by stories of the ill-fated love lives of two course participants who shall remain nameless. Being cunning climbing types and all, we phoned ahead to Levin Pizza Hut to save stopping for food and wasting precious time, and as a result ended up with enough Meatlovers Pizza to feed the entire population of Wharepapa for a week (or at least Ben Anderson for a weekend). In defence of Karen who did the ordering, who would have thought however that a Triple Pizza meant three large pizzas?! Kept awake by Simon’s tales, the time went quickly and we arrived at Bryce’s shortly after 11 pm. After arguing over who got to share a room with the self-confessed snorer of the group (again, no names, but it wasn’t me!), we all crashed out ready to be up and at the crag at the crack of dawn…except…it was raining. So after a bit of a sleep in, which I for one relished after a chaotic week and seven hours of Simon’s stories, when it became obvious the rain wasn’t going to stop in the near future, we took over Bryce’s bouldering cave, where Kate Smith made a dramatic first ascent on lead of the two foot high traverse on the rear wall, with the writer belaying her from a hanging belay two inches off the ground. Scary stuff. We also prussicked up and down our gleaming new ropes, had breaks when we shopped for gear at Bryce’s Wharepapa toll gate, and practised escaping from the system when things turned to custard. When we had done all we could possibly do in the bouldering cave, and the other climbers staying at Bryce’s were starting to look at us fiercely and twirl their hardware in an ominous manner as we hogged the cave, we went outside and spent a few minutes gazing hopefully at the sky. It was pretty clear the rain wasn’t stopping that afternoon, in fact just when we thought it was, it came down even harder. So we piled into the van and drove an hour to Rotorua, which for the record, has what I consider is the best indoor climbing gym I have climbed in in New Zealand. There were a number of achievable lead climbs set up, and although it was disappointing not to be out on the real rock, we learnt a great deal putting our new found skills into practice on some gnarly plastic routes. The gym takes up three floors of a building in the main street, and with the routes being about twice as long as anything at Fergs, it was a mind game to ignore the huge pump which started halfway up the route. I took my first fall on my new rope when I fumbled a clip halfway up, and sent Kate soaring into the air in a takeoff which had everyone in the gym laughing. Needless to say, after that experience, she made sure she anchored herself when belaying me! Of course we had a date with the television that night, so at 6.30 pm we drove back to Wharepapa in time for a delicious feed of spicy risotto a la Chong followed by Taylor strudel, before piling into Bryce’s living room to watch the Blacks kick the Boks. I don’t think when Bryce made his kind offer, he truly understood what he was getting himself into. A majority of females in a state of fervour over Dougie’s tight jersey and Carlos’s, ahem, passing skills, was probably not his idea of a great time! But the gesture was truly appreciated, thanks Bryce. To bed with sweet dreams of All Black wins (little did we know then) and dynamic moves on lead, and the next day dawned still and sunny. It was off as early as we could to Smith’s where we spent an awesome few hours experiencing the joy and the buzz of leading on real rock. Everyone got up a number of good routes within their respective climbing abilities, and seeing it all come together was magic. Someone likened the experience to climbing in Middle Earth, with the 360-degree views of roll
