Gearshop - Sponsorships

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Sponsorships

GearShop is proud to be sponsoring the following climbers:

Mark Watson

Mark Watson is 34 and works for the New Zealand Alpine Club as editor and publisher of both The Climber magazine and the NZ Alpine Journal.

Based in Lyttelton, Mark has been climbing for 18 years. He is a very active all-round climber (and general outdoors freak) and is passionate about most aspects of the sport, be it sport climbing, trad climbing or bouldering. He also gets into the mountains from time to time to tick off the Southern Alps classics.

Mark climbed Aoraki Mt Cook and Malte Brun at the age of 17, but later developed a stronger focus on rock climbing. He has since climbed in NZ, Australia, Thailand, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, UK, Canada and the USA. He has established many new boulder problems at Castle Hill and a few obscure routes on the Central North Island. His favourite NZ areas are the Darrans, Whanganui Bay and Castle Hill.

Mark has redpointed up to grade 28, onsighted a few 25s, bouldered to V8, and trad climbed to grade 26 and is right at home on long multi-pitch routes. He appeared in the climbing documentary Southern Faces, making an ascent of Gorilla Grip (27).

His outdoor industry background also includes a stint in outdoor retail, and a few years in the soft-goods market – working for Cactus Climbing Equipment and his own repair and custom manufacture business in Wellington. Mark’s partner Hana Black is an outdoor clothing designer.

His other passions include photography, cycling (MTB and road) and tramping.

Matthew Tait

Matthew has climbed extensively throughout the world in the last 10 years, with a focus on hard bouldering. Matthew has been seen in magazine's such as Rock & Ice, Rock, & Vbouldering. Matthew also features in the DVD Dosage

Check out some of his achievements:

V12 - Contact - The Villas, Aust.