I’ve submitted my PhD, and am unfortunately about to leave New Zealand. So over the past week I’ve been trying to cram in as much outdoorsy stuff as possible during my remaining time in this beautiful country.

On Sunday, my friend Sam and I left Dunedin around 7:30am, and drove to the start of the Dart valley, a couple of hours north of Queenstown. We climbed (most of) a classic rock route called Ravages of Time. We started climbing around 3pm and made it to the bottom of the final pitch at 8:30pm. But that was our pre-designated cut-off time, so we decided to head down, in order to get the complex parts of the descent over before dark. We made it back to our stashed beer around 10:30pm, and back to the car around 12am. Awesome climb.

Over the next couple of days we climbed at Kingston, and had an amazing day up at the Sundial, probably the most photogenic crag I have ever visited.