Reluctantly left the Needles after finally climbing White Punks on Dope, on Voodoo Dome (quite good). We're making our way North (slowly... we kind of like CA granite!) along the Eastern Sierra. We've decided to focus on the multipitch cragging this time (we did several of the classic alpine routes on previous trips many years ago). First stop: Whitney Portal.

We spend 5 months in New Zealand, climbing but also touring the North and South islands. We start with the North Island. After a couple of days in Auckland buying a suitable campervan, we head North at the end of September, visiting Northland, the Coromandel, and the Bay of Islands. We also hit several cragging spots near Wharepapa, before driving to Lake Taupo for more cragging at Kinloch, Kawakawa Bay and Whanganui. By then, it's the beginning of Spring, time to hit the mountains! We start with the volcanoes in the North Island: climb the North island highest point, Ruapehu and Taranaki, another volcano near New Plymouth. We then take the ferry to the South island and make our way to the Southern Alps, hitting a few other crags along the way (Paynes Ford, Poahara and Charleston). We also sea kayak for the first time near Abel Tasman National Park. Arthur's Pass is our next stop. Mt Rolleston provides a good conditioning climb and we see our first keas (wild alpine parrots) while hiking up the steep slopes of Avalanche Peak. We keep going south to Wanaka. There, we climb the Southwest ridge of Mt Aspiring, a striking line up the most beautiful mountains in the Southern Alps. Later, we climb the classic ice arete of Mt Tasman (North Shoulder) from Pioneer Hut, and Moonshine Buttress, a classic NZ alpine rock route. We also climb in the Darrans before heading back to Christchurch to sell our campervan.

Crossed the international date line… so this day never happened!

Flying to Auckland, NZ. We drive the bus and the jeep to the storage where they will stay for the next seven months. We then drive to the airport and fortunately get there very early. Somehow, a glitch between Air NZ and United had prevented our tickets from being confirmed on United's computer system. Don't ask. It takes 3 hours to get us checked in! It gets done at the last minute, we almost miss our flight to LA. Ah the joy of air travel! Quick one to Los Angeles, then a 12 hour "hop" to NZ. Very good seats fortunately, and good on-demand, in-flight entertainment made things go quickly.

We move to a small, pleasant RV park to ease the preparations for NZ. Spend a full day pulling all the gear out, selecting, spreading and checking, then weighing the end result. Looks like we're within 5lb of our airline allocation. A bit of elimination should get us there...

Starting the long drive to Las Vegas. We arrive in Parhump three days later after making a few stops at climbing shops along the way. We just realized we need to buy new crampons...

Continuing our journey South, we stop for a couple of days at Tieton River for some cragging. We climb "Ride the Lightning", a multipitch 5.9 on Goose Egg Mountain. The upper pitches are really loose and of dubious quality... not recommended. Just do the first two pitches if you must! We also start packing for our upcoming trip to New Zeland and Australia.

Heading South. We are scheduled to fly to New Zealand from Las Vegas on September 21 and we have a zillion things to do, including finding a place to store the bus and the jeep while we are gone. Anyway, after our last alpine trip, we just about had it with alpine climbing! At least for a while. We spend a couple of days in Winthrop mountain biking. We also climb "Restless Native" (5.11c, 10 pitches), another good one of Burdo's route on the Goat Wall.

The weather is still unsettled. We are spending a couple of days cragging at Index while waiting for the next weather window.

We've been at Washinton Pass for about a week now. The weather has been pretty good, although today it is raining hard and it doesn't look like it's gonna get good again for a few days. So far we've done the Northwest Corner of NEWS (again), the East Face of Lexington Tower, and the East Face of Minuteman Tower.

Finally made it to Big Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City, UT, late afternoon. We took our time driving and didn't do much along the way, except for checking out a couple of gear shops in Durango and Moab and sleeping like marmots - still recovering from last week's craziness (it took a lot of effort to move out of our appartment and into the bus and put all the stuff we left behind into storage).