With the Easter long weekend approaching and a perfect weather window, Steve and I were excited to be heading into the mountains. With the good conditions, we wanted to avoid the crowds so we decided to go slightly further afield to Petite Jorasses. Friday morning, Steve arrived from Zurich and met me at my apartment. I’d spent the past week in bed sick and he reassured me there was no pressure. There was, but it was all self-imposed and fuelled by perhaps a detrimental amoun

Dry tooling is an often misunderstood, ridiculed, and quite uncommon pastime. Up until now, toolers have been shunned: restricted to chosspiles that even Dan Head wouldn’t bolt. Places like the Pink Palace and such do not inspire much awe, and certainly do not encourage newbies into the sport. With so few people coming up through the ranks, the cutting edge of drytooling in NZ is lagging far behind our overseas competitors. Luckily, this is all about to change. Little Babylon

Back in March of 2025, during our ascent of 'Gods of Chaos', Jacob Kuchler and I stumbled upon what we believe to be some of the highest quality alpine schist in New Zealand. At the time we noted an extraordinary golden buttress down below us which was screaming out to be climbed. A month later, I managed to wrangle Liam Pyott into joining me on the first exploratory look at this new buttress. What stood out was a significant chimney system at about a third height. Separatin