Fiordland

Oh man, what a beautiful day. When I woke this morning, the first thing I saw was pink clouds reflecting the first rays of sun over the tops of the grass stocks just beyond by bivy sack. We had camped in a gravel pull-off on the way back to Wanaka, where I am now. I am typing in the Info center, in front of a full window looking out over the beautiful blue Lake Wanaka, with the high peaks around Mt Aspiring in the background. It is warm, sunny, and beautiful.

The wireless here does not seem to want to load my pictures, so you will have to see those later. Sorry!

We are back here after spending a few days in the Milford Sound area. What a dramatic landscape! We drove down there 4 days ago. The valley on the east side leading up to the crest is a long flat glacier valley with steep peaks and temerate rainforest on both sides. We stopped and picked up a german hitch hiker in the last major town of Tau Ana. Dan is in his early 20's, and his stated plan for time being is, "I'll be traveling for the next 10 years. India, China, South America, we'll see!" He has already been on the road for over a year, in Australia primarily.

We spend the night at a primitive camp site (picknick table, toilet, and a pullout). The next day we drove to the Milford Tunnel, which burrows through the continental divide. Milford Sound is in the heart of Fiordland, the drastic south-west coast of New Zealand. This rugged area is a glacier-carved territory that gets a large amount of rain year around and hence is a temperate rain forest. The very steep and deep valleys are filled with lush vegetation, and are surrounded by tall granite walls covered with more moss and vegetation. Above that are the peaks, which top out at around 2000 m and have granite summit caps above glacial hanging valleys. It turned out to be a beautiful day, but we found this out too late to climb anything big. After dropping off Dan at the tunnel, we ended up scrambling Moir's Mate (4th and easy 5th class). We were hoping to climb the North ridge of Moir, but the 5th class downclimbing would have turned dangerous if it rained and we did not have a rope, so we descended prematurely. We still gained over 1000 meters in a few hours.

The next day we drove to Milford sound early, arriving by just before 8am. This place is very busy, with lots of tour busses, boats, planes and helicopters. However by arriving early we missed many of the crowds. The morning was very pretty, with some clouds and mist and some blue sky.

That afternoon we went to one of the sport crags on steep granite that are in the area. The crag we were at was called the Chasm. The climbing was fantastic, with highly featured steep granite sport climbing. We first climbed a 3 pitch mixed gear and bolt route with short 5.10 then 5.11 trad pitches. The third pitch was a fantastic steep black dike with sandstone-esque pockeds that went at 5.12c. This pitch was called "But 't Milford." If only I had endurance I could have onsighted it...

Then down and over to another 2 pitch sport route. I wound have onsighted the 11d second pittch, but there were two exits and I chose the left hand one which turned out to be quite a bit harder than 11d. Then we went over to an excellent 2 pitch route that was the first route on the cliff, called "High Ideals and Big Ambitions." My lead on the second pitch was mostly on gear, with the 11a crux protected by 2 bolts. At the end of the day I tried to top rope one more pitch of 12a that was directly under the rappel, and made it after several hangs, content to call it a day.

Today we are on our way to the Mt Cook area. We are still undecided as to what to do, because we have 5 days left and the 3rd day is supposed to have bad weather. The big objectives that we want to do (Mt Sefton, Mt Cook) would be best in 5 days, meaning climbing on the 3rd day. So we will probably do two 2-day trips and develop plans for future years. That is about it! I'm excited for the last week here, and excited to get back to life in Chicago. It is good to be excited about what you are doing!