Yesterday I went for my first outdoor rock climbing session in Dunedin, and the first in many years, with a friend from university. I decided when I moved to Dunedin that I’d start climbing regularly, as I’ve always loved it, but have never got around to doing it on a regular basis. I’ve been climbing (well, bouldering) indoors a few times a week for almost six months, so I figured the transition to outdoors wouldn’t be too painful.

And I think I went ok; we did a few of the bolted routes above The Cave, and finished with a popular trad route on The Pinnacles - Alesia. I found the bolted routes pretty easy, but for some reason struggled on Alesia - it was probably inexperience, but I’m going to blame fatigue. I managed to pull myself up in the end, though.

Today I did a running (walking the steep bits) loop involving the Burns, Rustler and Pipeline tracks up to the top of Swampy Summit, and then the Leith Saddle track back down, about 10 km in all. It’s a great loop, but despite Dunedin receiving an entire day of sunshine, a bank of cloud sat on top of Swampy for the entire day, providing me with less than 50 metres visibility in some parts. A good run though.