The jandal-wearing outdoors enthusiast and author of A Winter’s Paddle (2014, Potton and Burton) has been waiting for the world to reopen for more than a year.
Instead of guiding tourists in the Arctic or the Antarctic, she has been uprooting wilding pines and controlling animal predators as a contractor to various organisations.
‘‘I’ll be talking about a couple of recent trips, with the theme of the beauty of doing long trips in the outdoors,’’ she said of her festival engagement.
The 23-year-old is most at home kayaking the challenging coastlines of New Zealand and Greenland, or cirumnavigating Norway’s Svalbard Archipeligo.
She shared stories of these adventures at last year’s festival.
From November last year until February, she went out of her comfort zone to traverse the Southern Alps from Nelson-Lakes to Fiordland.
‘‘I did about half of it by myself and had 34 days with two friends, Grace Flemings, of Auckland, and Shannon Mast, of Australia. I met them through the white-water kayaking scene. They joined in from Hokitika through to Mt Cook.’’
‘‘It was all tramping and mountaineering. None of it was on water, except for a section through the Landsborough on a pack raft. But the river flooded and I pretty much carried my pack raft all the way. So it wasn’t that much fun,’’ she said.
The traverse had been on her list of things to do since a 25-day expedition between Arthurs Pass and Aoraki-Mt Cook in 2017.
She was raised in Invercargill. After finishing at James Hargest High School in 2006, she completed a diploma in outdoor education at Aoraki Polytechnic in Timaru, before becoming a kayak guide.
Although she had always loved getting into the hills, she had not taken climbing seriously before.
‘‘It was more of a transalpine trip, crossing through remote wilderness areas, bracken fields and the Garden of Eden [an ice plateau on the west of the main divide],’’ she said.
She particularly enjoyed the remote Olivine Plateau, in Mt Aspiring National Park, where she had never been before.
There had never been pressure to be the fastest, go the hardest or do the longest adventure.
‘‘It is a really beautiful thing to go away for a long time. Life is actually quite easy while you are out there. You don’t need to be hardcore, just be out there. You just have to commit to the time,’’ she said.
The festival runs in Wanaka until June 29 and in Queenstown on July 1-3.
A full programme can be found on the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival website.
- By Marjorie Cook
