Adventures in abseiling

When I arrived in New Zealand, I yearned for a way to meet new people and explore the countryside. Some of the locals warned me that the terrain could be quite unforgiving and dangerous, with weather changing within minutes, making solo journeys obsolete. So when I heard about the Alpine Club, I jumped at the chance to join. It's a very laid back group composed of people from all different types of employment and varying in age from 18 to 60. Trips are planned almost every weekend, usually consisting of hiking the regional Taranaki countryside, but occasionally venturing into the middle of the island and even down to the south island. They are the group that guided me up Mt. Egmont twice, granting me the pictures you've all been perusing. However, hiking isn't the sole activity of the club. This past weekend we broke from the norm and went abseiling. Now for those who don't know what abseiling is (admittedly, I being one of them until I looked up the word), it's simply rappelling. And it's fabulous fun. When else do you get to descend down a sheer cliff face, reenacting scenes from Mission Impossible? Unfortunately, our group was quite large, including some high school kids from the Adventure Club, limiting our descents to two. The second, displayed in the pictures, was about 40-45 meters high and quite thrilling. I played my best Tom Cruise stunt double part, pushing myself away from the wall, narrowly missing a collision with the log below. Oops.
Yet, while the descent was not as technically difficult as you might think, the ascent was a different story. Having recently rained, the ground up the canyon wall was rather slick and moist, causing plant grip-holds to easily uproot, bathing us all in mud on the way up. Oh well, that's the price you pay for fun.