Longbeach Beach Party

I haven’t been posting much recently because I haven’t been doing much. After Mueller Hut it was mid-semester break at the uni here (they get a break in 1st and 2nd term!) and I had big plans for trips to go on. But then I got quite sick for the week so instead caught up on my favorite NZ drama, Outrageous Fortune. This past weekend the weather was terrible over most of the island with a storm hitting the west coast so no OUTC trips went away. Oh the fun of island weather systems, very erratic, and very intense. Instead we stayed local and headed out to the beach for the night to camp in a giant cave, hoping the bad weather would stay on the west coast … which it did, in fact it was a hot 25 degrees in Dunedin on the weekend, in late autumn. I can’t figure out the weather in this place at all. It was a fancy camping trip, considering we carried a bbq out to the beach to cook dinner and breakfast. We played a few rounds of cricket with driftwood for a bat and wickets, then randomly met the uni kayaking club out there and had a massive bonfire with them that night. This weekend I’m headed up to Christchurch for TWALK, a 24 hour orienteering race in the Canterbury hills. Basically you stay up all night searching for clues in the dark, stumbling over barbed wire fences and sheep. Then I’ve got a couple of trips planned for the following weekends that I’m really looking forward too, I can’t wait to get back into the mountains.

The massive cave we camped out in on long beach

In other news it looks like I’ll be sticking around NZ until at least the end of July, with a couple of side trips to the North Island and Australia. Then I’ll either go and travel around South East Asia for 4 months, or if I can find work here I might keep working in Dunedin for a couple more months and do some South East Asia travel for 1-2 months towards the end of the year. My plans are sort of a work in progress right now.

Climbing in Wanaka

I took a couple of days off work and headed to Wanaka with Madelaine for a climbing adventure. She had told me Wanaka was her favorite place in New Zealand so I was excited to explore and to go climbing. We got there late Sunday night and camped in a gravel quarry a couple hundred metres from the climbing bluffs and 100m strategically away from the “no camping” signs. The next morning the sounds of sheep bahing and cows mooing woke us up way before we could start climbing, since it was cold in the morning until the sun hit the rocks. It finally did though and we warmed up on a short easy going climb at Riverside. The views were really gorgeous. Then Madelaine gave me a lesson in sport climbing and how to clean an anchor and rappel down afterwards. My first sport climb was incredibly nerve wracking. I haven’t ever really been scared before in the little climbing that I’ve done on top rope because you know you will be caught if you fall. But if you’re above the anchor while sport climbing and fall, you actually fall at least a metre and often more. It feels more like “real climbing” and I was very aware of that and much more careful about where I placed my hands and feet. Then at the top I had to set things up to rappel down safely. It’s a different feeling to be responsible for your own safety instead of trusting somebody else to set things up for you, I found it to be a lot more scary.

Then we went and tried a climb called “get kerfuffled” where the first bolt was about 12 feet off the ground, which was kind of far and scary. I got about halfway up the climb to the part where you apparently “get kerfuffled” and then after taking a couple of lead falls decided to come down. Madelaine finished off the climb for me taking her first lead fall as well on a really tough part of the route. We decided we’d had enough lead climbing for the day and drove to an area of Wanaka called Hospital Flats where we could set up top ropes. We finished off the day with a couple of top ropes and an easy lead climb and then headed back to camp for dinner and beer. I understand why Madelaine loves Wanaka so much, the scenery is gorgeous and the climbs are really fun, it certainly compares with climbing in Squamish and is way less busy. We practically had the place to ourselves all day long. The next day the weather looked bad so we played around bouldering in Wanaka for a bit because we didn’t want to set up a rope and then have it rain on us. When the rain did hit we started driving home but stopped on the way at the Mighty Luggate Boulder for some more bouldering problems. Eventually we stopped to cook lunch at a rest stop but it was so windy out that we had to cook in the bathroom or our stove would keep going out. Our final stop on the way home was for real fruit ice cream outside an orchard, definitely some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. All in all it was a fabulous trip and I’m looking forward to doing more climbing in NZ!