Hulk Hogan Bouldering

Andrew and I took a road trip to do some bouldering near Duntroon, about a two hour drive south of Lake Tekapo. There are two different areas there, “Elephant Rocks” and “Hulk Hogan”, both sporting some great limestone in picturesque settings. The formations at Hulk are unlike anything I’ve seen before; it’s an overhanging ledge about eleven feet tall that extends for a good fifty yards, riddled with pockets and knobs to grab onto. Strangest of all, the rock is surrounded by flat sheep pastures and is basically in the middle of nowhere. I wonder how the first climber to stumble upon this spot reacted. The climbing here requires a lot of arm strength and endurance, so I made it up a few of the easier problems but got fatigued pretty quickly. Luckily it was a sunny day and we had some beer with us. After kicking back for a bit we headed over to check out Elephant Rocks, which is a strange collection of boulders of all shapes and sizes. We were a bit too tired for climbing, so instead we played a game where you charge full speed at a boulder and see how far you can run up it. We also did a bit of spying on a movie set that was being constructed nearby; parts of the first Narnia movie were filmed in this area, so we might have been looking at a future town for film three in the series. It was a good day of climbing, and on the drive back to Tekapo we stopped to look at some ancient Maori cave drawings.