Finn won the under-12 male National Sports Climbing Cup on September 19 in Christchurch, after accumulating the most points in a series of climbing events around New Zealand.
He heads to Rotorua soon to compete against the best climbers New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands can muster for the Oceania Championships and the New Zealand Nationals between October 3 and 5.
The Mt Aspiring College pupil and his mother, Fiona Fairbairn, rue the fact Wanaka no longer has a sports climbing club or network to support the efforts of several children who took up the sport when BaseCamp introduced it to Wanaka in 2006.
However, they have been grateful for the support of the Wanaka Masons, who recently donated $500 towards Finn's expenses, and rock climbers Scott Standen and Anna Simmonds who recently began helping Finn develop his outdoor rock-climbing skills.
Until recently, the Fairbairns and their friends had been travelling regularly to the Queenstown Events Centre to train on the climbing wall there, but increasing petrol costs put an end to that.
Finn has been using bouldering walls at his college and at Svenja Stellfeld's Hawea Flat property, and would probably go scrambling up the stacked-stone facades of Wanaka's commercial buildings if his mother and grandparents let him.
Finn was delighted with his win in the tightly contested national cup series two weekends ago, in which organisers had to increase the difficulty of the under-12 climb to put the young competitors out of their comfort zone.
"We had two qualifying rounds, then finals. Then we had to have a superfinal because three of us all got to the same level," he said.
The finalists were put into isolation to prevent them from watching what their competitors were doing.
"I was shaking all over and it was really, really scary. It was really nerve-wracking. It was the first superfinal I have ever had and I knew it would be a hard climb. I didn't know what I was facing," Finn said.
He won the competition with a ranking of 300 while fellow Wanaka under-12 competitor Jack Booth was second, with 240.
