Paine Ford Climbing

[Feature image: A view looking east along the climbing walls. Climbing lines in place for a attempt at the wall]

Nice easy day today, cloud cover moved in over night however not that cold. We are expecting a good downpour over the next few days so a nice short and easy walk today at Paine Ford is the todo. Paine Ford is just a couple of kilometers east of Takaka and is a favorite rock face for rock climbers here and afar with easy access and fantastic rock faces that suit novice to experienced climbers.

We arrive about 1300hrs and put on a light jacket just in case it starts to rain and head off along the track which caters for walker and bikers. As the track follows the Takaka River not long into the walk we come across a large swimming hole and I’m sure it would well used in the summer.

Further along we could hear a dog barking away in the bush and it was obviously with its owners as we could hear chatter up towards the rock faces. Jude and I took a side track that lead up to the rock face and we were lucky enough that there were a couple of guys there with one about to ascend this rather high vertical rock face.

So we have found our entertainment for the day and with permission from the guys we were allowed to film them. We couldn’t help but feel in awe of what these rock wall climbers could do and it reminded us of our Canadian trip when passing through Squamish in British Columbia we sat and watched climbers climbing these massive rock faces hundreds of meters above the ground doing multi-day climbs, many of whom had completed their first day and had setup their overnight bivouac suspended on these shear rock faces… I get tingly groin feeling just thinking about sleeping suspended on a vertical cliff face in a small tenty thingy!

A short walk but very interesting. The weather was due to turn a little damp as we felt a few drops on the face so we moved on along the track for another kilometer before returning to the carpark to head home… that being where ever our Moho is.