Calendar Pages

All of a sudden, once again, I am looking at a calendar and am amazed by what is left ahead of me in such a short amount of time. I left Bruce and Swenja's this morning, subsequently embarking on my final journey in NZ. The past few weeks at their house involved much cooking, weeding, and general maintenance of the land. Few new projects were started and at times it seemed as though jobs were only being done because there was nothing pressing to finish. I could feel my time there wrapping up and this morning it did. I'm incredibly grateful to Bruce and Swenja for having me around for so long and although it was unsaid at our parting, their pure presence helped my climbing progress over my time there and for that alone I am indebted to them since it was one of my primary goals in leaving the comforts of Colorado College to come here.

I am currently very hopeful to embark on some final climbing adventures in NZ. This past weekend I hiked up to the Brewster hut, above Haast Pass connecting Wanaka to the West Coast. The hut is underneath Mt. Armstrong and Mt. Brewster. My day friday ended with me hiking up to the hut to see a sunset over the mountains and the west coast. Upon arrival at the hut I ran into two other americans, one who has been living in NZ for 10 years and the other who is traveling around looking to climb, like me. As well, he is from Crestone, CO where CC has a satelite campus in southern Colorado...crazy huh? At 4 AM on Saturday morning we headed up to the top of Mt. Armstrong, an amazing, yet easy snow and rock scramble, to watch a beautiful sunrise and were back at the hut basking in the morning sun by 8AM. Mike and I are now keen on going to the Darrans to do some alpine climbing for hopefully at least a week. After that it is off to Dunedin to sell Mandy, maybe stay with some wwoof hosts there and make it back to Queenstown. I'm very excited by the prospects of all this climbing and hopefully will have some good weather windows to do so.

After all this traveling, seeing familiar faces in familiar places is going to be incredibly comforting and I can't wait! I hope everyone is doing well and as excited to see me as I am you! Much love!

Peter