How not to climb a mountain

Lessons learned today:

• Me and busses still isn’t a dependable combination. We ended up on the other side of the mountains we were intending to scale, far from any footpath.
• Mountains are always steeper than they look.
• Just because it looks like a path it doesn’t necessarily lead anywhere.
• There are wiser things you could do than straddling a thorn-bush while discovering that the foothold you thought was there turned out to be a hole.
• It is amazing how much motivation to keep scrambling through far-too-pointy undergrowth and over intimidating boulders can stem just from the realisation that there is just no way I’m going down that same way again, ouch, yikes.
• The mountains are full of sheep. Also bunnies.
• Christchurch is really pretty from above.
• Running around on mountains is ridiculously fun. I-could-do-this-everyday kind of fun.
• Peanut butter could probably fuel me through anything.
• Despite light-pollution from a rather large city the starry skies up there are breathtakingly splendid.
• Things not going according to plan more often than not result in awesome adventures.
• The “mountains” were in fact hills, but in the eyes of someone who grew up in flatland more than half a kilometre’s height is a bloody mountain.

Suitably heroic pose after having scaled Mount Pleasant in Port Hills.

Oh, and as for lessons of a more theoretical nature, I also started studying glaciology today. It seems to be a cool (haha!) and insanely intriguing subject. One of those if-I-had-unlimited-amounts-of-time-and-money-I’d-learn-all-there-is-to-know-about-it kind of subjects. The kind of subject that makes me wish I’d gone for more than one major. But oh well, astronomy is pretty fucking awesome too.

Love and hills,

Winterdragon