Coalition Crag

Picture this: a midwinter southerly lashes Dunedin. Sleet and wind-chill put the misery factor off the scale – why do we live here?
Jump in the car, 20 minutes later you’re at Doctors Point. The wind and the rising tide chase you through the Arches to a sheltered, warm wonderland. You strip to your T- shirt and shorts, don sunglasses, rack up and chalk up.
The high tide has filled the arches and the small coves, adding an aura of remoteness to the feeling of commitment you feel on the rock – length, continual technical interest, friable rock, tricky gear placements – the climbs demand total concentration and care, and reward you at the chains. Look down in your endorphic state at the turquoise waters lapping among the boulders at the base of the route. The sun sparkles off the water. Further out to sea you can see wind and shower whorls, but you are warmed and content. A small, perfectly formed point break is peeling off the Peninsula. Now you are reminded how good it can be to live here.
Climbing is an intensely personal and subjective pastime, and I don’t expect others to necessarily enjoy what I do, but this crag is producing climbs that give me a buzz, something that hasn’t happened locally since the Graeme Love era of 15 years ago.
In the winter of 1998, Murray Judge’s presence in the area developing the Cutting Crag reawakened my long dormant interest in the Doctors Point seacliffs, and I rapped down from the railway line to have a look at the teetering cliffs between the arches and the Mapoutahi Peninsula. As crumbling rock and loose blocks were being cleared to unearth the first climb on the crag, the tawdry marriage of NZ First and National was simultaneously in the process of disintegration – the metaphor was inescapable. Intensive Care emerged from the rubble and opened my eyes to the middle grade adventure climbing possibilities here.