Charlie Creese reminisces about New Zealand's climbing culture in the 1970s and early '80s as it developed in parallel with an international boom in the sport during a fractious global era...

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They say if you remember the 1960s, you weren't there. But what about the 1970s? Stagflation, The Oil Crisis, Donny Osmond, endless strikes and the perpetual threat of nuclear war. Chances are if you do remember then you've probably been spending the rest of your life trying to forget it. What did Tim Page call that era? "A decade gone blah."

But not if you were a climber. Well, it was certainly a heady time in terms of development – and the technological advances? It doesn't even bear thinking about what life was like before them! But does our sport really merit special dispensation? Maybe. Remember that photo of The Stonemasters in El Capitan Meadow? Looking for all the world like they'd just stepped out of a music festival, although in reality they'd just done the first one-day-ascent of The Nose. It was 1975. I first laid eyes on that image as a teenager – and, being a citizen of far-flung New Zealand, the sight of these guys dressed in paisley shirts and flared pants (something that invited all manner of derision later on!) struck me as impossibly glamorous. Surely these men were the coolest people in the world?

Well, as a matter of fact, they were the coolest people in the world. But how did it pertain to a country like New Zealand? I mean, airline pilots used to advise passengers to set their watches back 20 years when planes landed at a Kiwi airport (!) People did pick up on stuff from overseas, but usually there was a lag – not substantial, but a lag nonetheless. And it was always kind of awkward trying to import ideas and trends that had originated in the pressure cooker of mass societies in The Northern Hemisphere. I mean, New Zealand is a country where even the capital city barely makes it out of the bush! Spikey hair and razor blades? Makes a great backdrop for tourist snaps of Trafalgar Square – but rebellion in Aoteoroa takes other forms.

Never underestimate the individualism of a small place. Kiwis are proof, 'cos they invariably punch above their weight in any field you could name really – although atomic physics and opera are as good examples as any. It's sort of inevitable, however, that the burgeoning exuberance of a young country would find its best expression on the world stage in the form of sport. Small country syndrome?Perhaps. I'd dearly like to think I'm above it – but it's hard not to feel just the faintest twinge of pride concerning this – especially when you're in some far-flung pub and everyone else is wearing a coloured jersey and you're going for Black. Climbing provides a few examples too – the most memorable being Ed Hillary and the first ascent of Everest. New Zealand might be remote, but its geology more than makes up for it — and the inhabitants are nothing if not aspirational.

And the climbing magazines that managed to find their way Down Under certainly provided a lot to aspire to. There could be no doubting how high the bar was overseas when looking at the pictures. We used to pore over the things – info freaks I guess, before the advent of the net. But even then, it was still with a certain amount of surprise that we learned, in 1979, that one of the hardest routes in Britain – Strawberries at Tremadog – had been repeated by a seventeen-year-old (Jerry Moffatt – that man again). Precociousness in climbing wasn't exactly unheard of – but it was rare – and the reaction it induced was pretty much the same as that induced today by that climbing meme, "the time my gym project got flashed by a kid." Even half the world away, it was hard not to feel deflated.

But as I say, never discount the individualism of a small place. One of my partners wasn't so much deflated as simply disappointed in himself. He was already 16 and time was clearly running out! His name was Robin, which played into that classic Antipodean trope about the hardships of going through life with a girl's name. I've met a fair number of good climbers (all those Brits at Arapiles!) and this guy was as gifted as any – strong, bold, and smart – and there was certainly no doubting his motivation.

"I'm going to have to pull my finger out," he said tonelessly. I still laugh when I remember that – this guy's career was only just beginning, but he was already determined to hold his own with the best.

He ought to have gone far. Unfortunately, there was the small matter of where we grew up. Wellington once had the reputation of being the most boring capital in The British Commonwealth. That's right – it actually managed to trump both Ottawa and Canberra! The rock on offer was negligible and the nearest good crags were four hours' drive away. But that's the central paradox of this story I guess – how climbing thrived in a place with no climbing.

It actually makes sense, 'cos another one of the downers that characterised the '70s was Britain's entry into The Common Market – along with the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil embargo, which sent unemployment in New Zealand soaring. Fortunately, the government had a monopoly on a form of wealth creation known as taxation — and there was always room for more bureaucrats. So while the local climbing wasn't great, some of the people who were drawn to Wellington were.

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It was about this time I joined the Rock Climbing Elective at my new high school – a fairly unlikely choice – 'cos the only thing I knew about sport at that stage was that I couldn't run and catch at the same time. But the only people I knew were members. And even then there was an aura about it, possibly because no other school would have dreamed of such a thing, let alone allowed it; a fact that naturally appealed to the edginess of the teenage psyche. I'd never really seen a rock face, but I did know the area frequented by the club was a sun spot beside the sea. Sounded ideal. For sun bathing.

The Rock Climbing Elective, however, had scant regard for pikers [British English: uncommitted, flaky people] – and, as we all know, nothing compares to the evangelical zeal of people who are trying to get you to partake in their beloved cliff-scaling.

I didn't like it much – they tied a single strand of hawser rope around my waist and sent me up some V Diff, while somewhere far above, some feckless teenager was guarding my life with a waist belay and God-knows-what for an anchor. But there was no turning back. And I was soon apprised of some new facts about the universe. North Island climbing, for example, did have one renowned area – Whanganui Bay – known to all as "The Bay." But "the bay" where I started was the other one. Ha. It did have the distinction, however, of being the subject of one of the very first rock climbing guides in NZ. Now that was interesting. After all, it's a well known fact that if something makes it into print, it usually attains - perhaps unfairly - a degree of credibility. A guide, I guess, is not the type of document you'd describe as poetic, but this one had topos – beautiful topos. The author, it seemed, was also a gifted draughtsman. First ascensionists remained anonymous, but the occasional comment hinted at an unseen pantheon of champions who had once enacted their deeds on these very shores. A certain route had the description "this famous slab can be led – but protection is non-existent."  Famous to whom exactly? And who were the hard men who had done it?

Our teacher was one of the archetypes of the era – the long-haired idealist who wanted to push the boundaries of the education system. He also had considerable force of personality that did much to ensure that – in lieu of conventional discipline - things didn't get out of hand. A great guy. He drove an old Bedford van that somehow always seemed to accommodate all those individuals of either sex who, for whatever reason, had elected to join this strange pirate nation.

We were all too young for the pub, so the van was where climbing lore was handed down. And there was actually lore to share. The guidebook had been authored by a one Graeme Dingle, whose subsequent involvement in a TV adventure series featuring none other than Ed Hillary – the most famous living New Zealander – ultimately made him something of a household name. These days he even gets an entry in the contemporary fount of World Wide validation that is Wikipedia. "In 1968," it says, "Dingle and Murray Jones (another Kiwi) were the first to climb all six major European North Faces and the Bonatti Pillar, including the Eiger and Matterhorn, in one season." Graeme, at that stage, was working for the outdoor equipment manufacturer Hallmark. His reputation must have been pretty well established, because his new boss asked him what he wanted to be paid (!). "In a breath I went from socialist to capitalist, walked down the road and bought an E Type Jaguar." There's nothing like a cold bivouac to help nurture an appreciation for the finer things in life!

An even less likely inhabitant of the capital was a guy who was a family friend of our teacher – a guy whose insatiable appetite for alpinism ought to have rendered him unfit for any kind of residency in the North Island. But there it was: Bill Denz – who was soon to become a legend for his feats in the Southern Alps – had done a stint with Military Intelligence in the capital; learning Vietnamese apparently, still a marketable skill in those days of "The Domino Theory."

It's funny to think of them taking risks that these days have become rather unfashionable, simply in order to develop an area that, quite frankly, was only ever going to be avoided. But the arguments for making a discipline of loose rock, atrocious landings, and non-existent gear were actually quite good if you were contemplating the mountains just across the water. I wish I could have witnessed some of the action. Dingle created a route called Dysentery Groove (the potty theme being derived from the lava-like striations in the rock, hence Lavatory Wall – geddit?) and lessened some its fearsomeness with a peg that was only supposed to be for "psychological" value. I remember that peg – I was 15 when I climbed past it and I wasn't about to let go of the holds! Denz, whose short life demonstrated just how psychological psychological could be, actually took a fall on it – an experience that left him unfazed, but not so the guy who placed it.

The best argument I had for following in their footsteps with my hawser rope, Para Jet sneakers, and – so help me - homemade harness was that I didn't know any better. Also, I rapidly acquired a copy of the guide with its wonderful illustrations. I don't think I've even pored over the Arapiles guide in the same way – and I love Arapiles. But there's nothing like first infatuation. Many of the routes had Lord of the Rings themed names, which made for a pretty surreal juxtaposition years later when I landed at "Wellington International Airport" (don't laugh, they even have flights to Sydney and Brisbane) and there was a 13-metre rubber Gollum on the roof of the arrivals terminal. I guess doing those old routes was good prep: if you'd ever done Gollum's Crack (which we freed, by the way), you could certainly see the humour.

Low-angled climbing in those days wasn't nearly as unfashionable as it is now. I mean, in the age of primitive safeguards, what was more comforting than getting your weight over your feet? And the aforementioned "famous slab with non-existent protection" quickly became – with a helping hand from the inspirational Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage (whose narrator, Hermann Buhl, knew a thing or two about spaced gear) – an obsession. They called it "The Baby's Bottom" – a little hyperbolic perhaps, but a reasonable nod at contemporary standards of "smooth." It bore the ominous grade of Mild Extreme (which for some reason was worse than Hard Very Difficult, now there's fertile ground for controversy!). Sandshoes wouldn't really cut it on the required solo (after some top-rope practice, thank God). The '70s being the '70s, however, it went without saying that there were brands of shoe that were every bit as bad as the fashion. My first pair of "bought" shoes were RDs – the moniker being a reference to their creator, René Desmaison. Board-lasted doesn't really describe the stiffness of the things; if the rock was some kind of unstoppable force, then the RD sole was the immovable object. Not too flash for the smearing move at the top of the route, they kept skating – and if the skate gathered momentum there was always the rocky ground to stop you, 30 feet below.

I was 15 at the time and I'd managed that without in any way being a bold climber. It was the era I guess. Besides, as Ed Hillary famously said, "even the fearful can achieve." One of the handful of people to whom the route was "famous" was Bill Denz – whom I subsequently met at Mount Cook Village. He was very much a man of the world by then and not at all snobbish. But he certainly had a daunting resume: the first solo of a new route on The Caroline Face of Mt Cook, the FA of The Balfour Face of Tasman – followed up with the first winter ascent, NZ's first bona fide big wall routes in The Darran Mountains down in Fiordland, numerous routes on El Capitan and a near-successful solo attempt on the then seldom-climbed Cerro Torre. Well he certainly made up for the time he wasted in Wellington! I actually went up to him and introduced myself – which he didn't mind in the least. Glad I did, because this legend who once confided that his ambition was to be "an old man pottering around the garden," had only a few more months to live. He remembered "the bay" all right – just as he remembered our old teacher – and he was certainly impressed that I'd soloed that aforementioned route before I'd even enjoyed a decent growth spurt.

But grow I did. In my first couple of years of climbing, I'd worked through most of the classic mountaineering literature in the Wellington Public Library (much to the amusement of my mother, who felt that "Conquistadors of the Useless" aptly described her life as a housewife!). It was inevitable, however, that the onset of adolescence – with its tantalising glimpses of freedom (Jim Bridwell's Brave New World in Mountain Magazine being the best glimpse of all) – would render problematic the first love I'd enjoyed on those not even third-rate crags near home.

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Finding freedom meant going north: to the Central North Island - or maybe even Auckland - whose population back then was purportedly nearing the one million mark (!!!!). It says something for the complex way in which popular culture permeated everyday life, however, that the pretext for going was Bob Dylan's one New Zealand gig on his 1978 World Tour. The advent of Punk ought to have rendered such a journey pathetic – but if the '60s were a football team, then it was a real eye opener watching the way people flocked back to the colours if there was any sign of a comeback. Knowing full well – thanks to the proselytising of friends – that Bob could get a little boring, I'd formulated a plan B thanks to an obscure Little Red Book in the climbing section of the library, a newly-minted guidebook to Auckland and environs. Apparently there was a crag just outside the CBD! It was a little hard to know what to expect from this. I mean, New Zealand is a country with a permanent snowline and here was a metropolis that smacked of tropical decadence. Still, it was great to see they were having a go.

I still find it hard to describe what ensued, but life-changing sort of covers it. This quarry in not-quite-central Auckland was quintessentially urban – bounded variously by a motorway, a prison, a Grammar School behind, and – of all things – a working quarry right next to the dormant one. You entered via the Spanish mission-style school, sauntered down an access road that led to the inevitable playing field, and – with only a few more steps – found yourself at the base of the type of columnar formation that can usually be found wherever volcanic activity has occurred. There wasn't a lot of evidence of blasting; the columns alternated between smooth, flared grooves, and sharp, semi-featureless arêtes. There was a marked absence of positive holds.

I'd unwittingly alighted at the sector that contained what I subsequently learned was the first 26 in New Zealand – in Australasia in fact. Given that most of the routes I'd been doing in Wellington had been put up in 1970, my situation was akin to that of a caveman who's just been presented with an iPhone. There was a guy bouldering the start of said route, the now famous Supergroove (26 FA 1976). He wasn't using chalk, but he did avail himself of a little assistance from the dried dirt at the edge of the playing field – something that struck me as being rather sophisticated. And he certainly needed it: the start is the technical crux, although there are a couple more road bumps higher up, with another crux and an awkward wide bridging section where – years later – none other than Britain's own John Allen dislocated his shoulder.

I couldn't even get off the ground and in my naivety imagined that every subsequent move was as hard as the first, i.e. 5.12 all the way! If this was an example of where the bar was in the rest of the world, then my climbing aspirations weren't going to go very far. The first ascent had been done by a guy called McBirney, who'd subsequently disappeared from the scene. His absence only added to the mystique; like the "chief designer" in the Soviet moon rocket program, whose laughing, partially-veiled face suddenly appears in The Right Stuff movie every time a US rocket explodes just after take off.

School Certificate didn't seem very important after that. But in one of those unlikely twists that served to keep a Wellington climbing career alive, a book began circulating in my class. In climbing-aware NZ, some shrewd entrepreneur had imported a few copies of Pat Ament's Master of Rock, the legendary biography of US boulderer John Gill. Opening the covers was another seminal climbing moment, like pulling the trigger of a cam for the first time or the first smear with sticky rubber soles. Bouldering at that time was "the love that dare not speak its name"; all it did was signal that you were afraid of heights. But the photos of Gill spoke for themselves and in a very short space of time the hard men who'd formerly been the arbiters of what was "real climbing" started to look somewhat pudgy and in bad need of a shave.

People in Wellington often referred to another climbing area on the other side of the harbour, where the wind blew like in Patagonia, making for the cleanest air in the world. It also served to sand blast a collection of rather nice-looking boulders that very conveniently protruded from a beach. Baring Head. The quality of the rock hadn't gone unnoticed though, there was another group of climbers across town – and it wasn't a big town to begin with. We'd encounter them occasionally at "the bay" and carefully monitor their progress vis-à-vis our own. Some of them had even been to the Central North Island, which sounds quaintly provincial when you phrase it like that, but back then it smacked of  "the other"; an exotic geological motherlode that was in the process – thanks to the aforementioned Graeme Dingle - of producing a whole new generation of climbs. Things were changing fast.

Baring Head began to take off and the quality of the problems that went up was accompanied by a marked break with tradition: they got named just like real climbs. Rock Bottom and Only the Good Die Young were the ones that really stood out – both of them climbed by an in-form Kevin Boekholt. They were also kind of big – no-one used the term highball back then – but the fact that they were above sand gave rise to creations that had a beginning, a middle and an end.

If that sounds like a Russian novel, it should – 'cos by the time I'd got to the middle of these routes, I no longer had the strength to keep turning the page! I'm not really into ranking (aside from slagging off Australians, of course). Rock climbing, after all, is so complex that people of wildly diverse talents will invariably find a niche. But one thing was apparent: our friends from across town were the future and we were going to have to work hard to catch up.

***

It's a cliché about age that you can't remember what you ate for breakfast, but the distant past comes flooding back in detail. Thus the winter of 1980. All of a sudden there was a group of us. I didn't exactly feel like an outsider before I climbed – but lacking any kind of aptitude for sport didn't make for a smooth passage through the school system either. By my late teens, however, I'd already been a climber for half a decade and the chemistry in my brain had begun to give off that weird climber light that other kids in other places could recognise; the kids who read back copies of Mountain and who did chin-ups on the architraves of unsuspecting suburban homes.

World events ought to have held us back. There was another energy crisis in those years, when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 saw a drop in oil production and New Zealanders were debarred from driving their cars one day a week. Can't say I noticed much. We were out at "The Head" every Saturday or Sunday – a whole group of us, crossing the ice-cold Wainuiomata River that separated the boulders from the parking lot, eyes fixed on the next challenge. Nowadays, of course, people like to read history backwards and it does rather seem that some of the problems are not worth the discomfort of the crossing. But no one was saying that at the time. B3 was still top of The Gill Scale and a lot of us had only just graduated from sandshoes.

My mate Drew – possibly inspired by a picture from the book Yosemite Climber – started bringing out a tiny cassette player and I still play those tunes in the climbing gym today, 'cos with the advent of streaming, what's old is new again. And after all, it's hard not to relate to Pump it Up, Train in Vain, Stick to Me, and Can't Get No Protection regardless of what era you happen to be climbing in. And let's not forget AC/DC's newly minted Back in Black – not exactly fashionable in that era of short hair and stove leg pants, but our friends from across town were certified headbangers and history has vindicated their taste with 50 million copies sold and still counting.

Some routes are rites of passage and over at The Head that status belonged to Kevin's Only the Good Die Young. Having just graduated from "not strong enough" to "just strong enough," topping-out was very special indeed. As was the relatively new phenomena of "the pump". Trying to loosen one's shoe laces afterwards certainly afforded an insight into just how difficult old age might be! But – to paraphrase Henry Kissinger – a problem solved is an admission ticket to a new set of problems and before too long there were another three routes on that wall and the pump became more intense still. We started running out of rock – and by "we" I mean the guys who'd slithered out of Wellington's surprisingly deep talent pool and become my friends: Robin, the teenage prodigy whose hero was Ron Fawcett; Matt the strongman; Robert and Drew (not quite as driven but essential to the vibe) and Chris, whose old Morris Oxford got us around. He'd recently returned from England with the incredible news that some of the famous crags were composed of rock every bit as bad as what we'd been climbing in Aotearoa!

Later on, new empires arose and people who weren't even there at the time denigrated the place from afar and other people claimed first ascents of routes that had already been done multiple times. Funny that, 'cos it's not exactly an extensive area. Back in late 1980, we'd already reached "peak rock" as it were – with a few notable exceptions – and the next logical thing was to start doing laps on the best walls. A little later I even managed to establish the country's first V8, but no one even noticed, which was kind of lucky really – 'cos you don't want to give people the impression you're afraid of heights! One of the unintended consequences of all this lapping, however, was that people began to develop a level of power that was unusual when the dominant style was trad. Well, you could debate that of course – but I do remember a well-known Aussie trying to describe the strong fingers of a visiting European and saying: "They're almost as strong as yours." And I'm like "mate, you should have seen my friends'."

It takes more than strength to get up climbs anyhow. But whatever we had, we wanted to take it to established areas and make a noise. Not the most original plan, I guess – and one that quickly foundered due to Wellington's unique combination of geographical drawbacks. There was quality limestone in Takaka 300 or so kilometres away at the tip of the South Island, but the famously rough Cook Straight made getting there slow, expensive and uncomfortable. Likewise, the quality crags of the Central North Island could only be accessed via State Hiway One, which at one point switchbacks through The Rangipo Desert – great if you're a tourist, but tiring and slow if you're itching to send your project.

Without climbing gyms to sustain the enthusiasm, the guys I'd made all those river crossings with slowly began to drift into other pursuits. One of them – quite inexplicably – even got a job and a girlfriend, but the memory of his talent still lives on in my mind. I just wish we'd taken more photos.

I was the Lifer, it seemed. I'd quit school the year before – proudly telling my father they had nothing more to teach me – and after a couple of short-lived jobs, set out on a quest for the perfect move. Not an unfeasible goal – there were some good crags out there – but there was also a lot of down time on the side of the road between lifts, 'cos being penurious, I was thumbing my way around. But "the road is life," as Jack Kerouac famously said, and getting to the crags often meant having to adapt oneself to all kinds of contingencies along the way, like a truck driver whose differential fell apart on a busy road going in to Auckland, or having to rush through the rear doors of the Inter Island Ferry because the gangplanks had already been withdrawn in preparation for sailing.

No one ever said that New Zealand wasn't a great country for a road trip. But in the end all roads led back to what The Crag website describes as "the crucible of hard rock climbing in New Zealand": Mount Eden Quarry in Auckland. I had a wonderful doss in a leafy suburb called Remuera, just down the road from Ed Hillary (seriously) and enough free time to savour the commute to the Grammar School wherein The Quarry was located. I've always loved Auckland – it's got two harbours, good weather and beautiful islands offshore. A lot of Kiwis hate the place, maybe because it's just big enough to maintain a thin veneer of metropolitan arrogance. I don't have a strong opinion either way, although there's as many people where I live as in all of New Zealand combined and Auckland tends to shrink after you've been there for more than a few days.

Bill Denz once described the climbers there as "the old men of caution." Cheeky man! They were certainly impressive on their home turf, however, where they still had the hardest technical rock climb in NZ: the aforementioned Supergroove, which despite some strong attempts, had still not seen an ascent by out-of-towners. The second ascent had gone to a guy named Rick McGregor, which kind of reinforced the notion that the place was the sole preserve of some kind of well-muscled Scottish Mafia. Me personally, I'd never gotten over my initial encounter with the thing a few years before and when I rocked up later on, as the rather surprising product of an unsuspected "Wellington climbing scene", I was still having trouble with the starting moves. But I had been to Australia, which apart from being one of the coldest countries in the world (Arapiles in June? You can forget about beach volleyball!) was a veritable melting pot of local talent and a constant stream of overseas stars who brought the latest high standards with them. It might have been "Down Under", but the outlook was global. A friend likes to remind me how I once said that "every man and his dog climbs 25 in Australia." Well it certainly seemed that way the winter I was there. Indeed, if I reflect on this in the 21^st Century, it actually seems more impressive still, 'cos people were climbing in those accursed EB bubble boots. And if you were lucky enough to encounter fixed protection, you could at least take heart if it stuck out a long way or rattled, because then it was much more likely to evade the prevailing ethical strictures!

The experience paid off: I got the third ascent. It didn't disappoint over 15 metres of smooth, overhanging bridging with one bolt and a lot of small wires for pro. A sport climber's nightmare and a fairly idiosyncratic undertaking even for the time, hardly likely to damage one's fingers. Yet as one pundit observed many years later, "watch your shoulders in the upper groove." I was even lucky enough to create some new routes that really did damage your fingers – well mine anyway. "The crucible of hard climbing in NZ" had its detractors of course – but I don't remember anyone who didn't struggle trying to come to terms with the style. Only too happy to share details!

I stopped going back after a while and missed the re-emergence of the route's creator, the legendary McBirney. Apparently he was a great guy who thoroughly endeared himself to his younger companions by doing repeat ascents of his own creation. I'm not even sure if I wish I'd been there, 'cos all my life I've still managed to retain that sense of wonder I felt at age 15 – unable to leave the ground - and all the time knowing that someone else had already passed this way. What's reality compared to that? To me he's always been as remote from any kind of understanding as - say - the creators of the Easter Island monoliths. Presumably he was some kind of giant. How else could he have produced such a futuristic masterpiece? In 1976, it was up there with the best! But it was the 1970s nonetheless and the hit parade that year was dominated by Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney, Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Truly it was a decade gone blah!

But not if you were a climber, mate.