Wharepapa South: Redux

Bryce picked me up at the market 40 minutes later or so, and after a lengthy quiet ride (seems I interrupted his dinner) we arrived at Bryce’s Outdoor Centre. He points to one of the rooms in the back and mumbles something before disappearing.

Daylight brings new light to my situation; I find myself on a rather quaint plot of land with clean hostel rooms in the back, a lawn area and patio for relaxing, a fully equipped kitchen and communal area, and a room converted to a bouldering cave for nights or rainy days. In the front is Bryce’s café, the only place in “town” to get a meat pie or something to drink. He also boasts the largest selection of rock climbing gear in the country. The town consists of Bryce’s place, a school next door, a random mechanic shop across the street, and that’s about it aside from the farms. Down the road a bit is a street light. Not quite sure why it’s there.

Bryce turns out to be a great guy once he warms up to you a bit. There is a bit of prejudice against Americans, but that goes away as soon as people find out you’re not the pompous, lazy, self-absorbed stereotype that the rest of the world sees us as. Bryce is a climber, first and foremost – and probably second and third – coming in a distant fourth is a businessman trying to make an honest buck. His name appears on just about every page of every guidebook for the area for putting up new routes. Pushing 60 now, he still can crank out some 5.12s when he gets competitive – which is just about always. You can also count on him for a well-delivered sandbag; he got me good, more on that when I get to the climbing.



I took a risk coming out to Wharepapa, as climbing is a sport that requires two [experienced] people to do safely. Bryce assured me that there’s always people coming through, but picking up a decent partner can be a painful process. My backup plan was to just continue through to the sightseeing town of Rotorua if I couldn’t pick up a partner in a couple days. As a stroke of luck, a Canadian from Vancouver island showed up the same day I did, looking to do some climbing. Sean was out here a month earlier taking a course from Bryce on introductory climbing and returned to do some woofing (working in turn for free stay) and further his learning the art of climbing. Outside the gym he’d only been through Bryce’s intro course and a few trips with Bryce, but by the time I finished with him he’d got copious experience on belay, grunted up chimneys, climbed multi-pitch, fell off 5.11s, caught some whippers, removed trad gear, and suffered his first overuse injury of the hands. Sorry bout that Sean. He even came out just to belay as he was resting his hand injury.


Some 300,000+ years ago what scientists believe to be one of the largest volcanic eruptions in earth’s history took place 100 km south of Wharepapa, covering the land in a type of rock known as ignimbrite. The rock is very climbable, and absolutely littered about the central region. Depending on the proximity to the epicenter the rock changes qualities, leaving us with an assortment of climbing styles, from overhanging pocket-pulling, to long splitter cracks solid enough to take traditional gear. I went on a frenzy over my 12 days in Wharepapa and climbed six areas, ticking off over a 100 routes in total. More on that once I get through some pics…