So on Wednesday afternoon a friend of a friend (Florian – friend of Laura Poslers’) arrived from Germany. As soon as Florian arrived he was straight into NZ life! Just off the plane and straight off climbing with Glynn and John to Britten Crag.
Then on Thursday morning he was woken up by Warick – who took him off kayaking in sumner.. Warick has been teaching Jana and Julien to roll their kayaks.. Jana was most impressive and got it on her second session (which is really fast).
In the evening a bunch of us went to see Simon Yates (infamously known as the guy who cut the rope on Joe Simpson (Touching the Void).
Florian,Simon,me.
He was an excellent speaker. Really dry humour and simply incredible stories. Quite a lot of his experience has been putting up new routes, with stories of travelling down through Tiera Del Fuego and new routes in Pakistan etc. He only talked briefly on the accident with Joe.. I honestly don’t think he did anything wrong, and if he’d not been as good as he was in getting Joe as far down the mountain as he did then Joe would never have made it anyway. Desperate situation. One of the more terrible jokes, was when Simon was recounting how he’d been on the phone to a friend for 10 mins, and then they’d finished their conversation and hung up. Someone else then asked this friend who he’d been talking to – and he said ‘Oh, just my mate Simon Yates’ and the guy goes ‘Oh, did he cut you off…’ ba boom.
Friday Glynn,John,Susan,Florian and I were going to head climbing at Paynes Forde, but the weather wasn’t looking good enough to travel 14 hours over the weekend.. (and it did rain!) So instead out for pool and pints, and then Castle Rock for my first trad climbing in over a year… (though this pic of John)
Then some more bouldering at Castle Hill this time on Sunday. So another weekend around ChCh, not quite to plan, but still.. has to happen sometimes!
Quite excited though, am off to Wellington with work on the 23rd->25th with work, and then I’ll just stay up for the weekend and have a look around.. should be fun. Supposed to be an excellent city, even if it is expecting some earthquake (long overdue) which should completely wipe out the centre of the city..
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