History: two decades of NZ bouldering comps

From the early 2000s, a volunteer-run national bouldering series in New Zealand held its rounds outdoors, on real rock, over summer weekends. Rounds were held on limestone near Waitomo, on the Wellington south coast and in the Castle Hill basin, with other venues added in later years. Around 2010 an indoor series began alongside it in climbing gyms, and over the following years competition bouldering in New Zealand moved mostly indoors.

The national indoor series is still running today. It has its own official series site, and the New Zealand Alpine Club supports it, according to Wikipedia's article on the club. We have no connection with the series, the club or the people who ran the earlier events.

Our long-form overview is Thirteen summers of national bouldering comps in New Zealand, 2003–2016. The odd one out is the 2014 bouldergaine at Kura Tāwhiti, an event that crossed bouldering with rogaining and now has its own Wikipedia entry.

We deliberately leave out names, results tables and old event material. These notes are about how the sport developed, not about who won.