My last week in France, I enjoy it. This place where I am in France (Lot) is like a different planet. We rebuild the last ruin with nature stones and wood from our forest. For me this is the most beautiful place I know in Europe, a house in the middle of and forest on a south hill. I start to see details in nature I never saw before. But for me there is not enough action and not enough change. Next week I’ll live with my freeride buddys and climb the Austrian mountains again with the latest equipment in the deep fresh powder snow. O love the winter.

Here two foto’s of our neighbour and Goliat our dog. We have a little house we rent: http://www.cabreperdu.com

Maybe you ask yourself how I stay/ get fit for the winter:

I sport all the time, but now I am in south France and climb a lot what will not help me to get strong legs and no muscle endurance. So besides climbing I run, bike and I started training with a personal trainer from Freisport (www.freisport.com).  Three times a week 20 min. over skype. This works very good, you won’t believe how effective 20 min. of training can be.

Food

As always I watch my food, I am vegetarian, beside the few times I eat wild meat. I eat mostly grains, fruits and vegetables, if possible organic, fresh and unrefined. On the moment I eat straight from the garden. I regularly eat legumes, nuts, mushrooms and seaweed. I eat not too much cheese and eggs. I avoid animal fats, regular sugar and chemical additions. Ex: instead of a regular sports drink, grape juice diluted with water.

Here a movie I made about New Zealand and some photos from home in France and Goliat (my dog).

Together with my dad we repair a little ruine. It was a little house where they dried chesnuts and other nuts. We will make a sauna. And I made the cover with a photo from Michiel Rotgans. This time on the cover on the Taste. Taste it:

­Five days after leaving Christchurch I’m back in South France, working on a little ‘nature house’. On the way home I did some sight-seeing in Signapore (see butterfly photo) and Paris . No more crazy ice caves, rain forest and volcanos. No more penguins, Kiwis and other colourful birds. I guess I felt in love with New Zealand.

 I’ll show you some photos from the last week in New Zealand. But before that I need to thank some people, without them it would not have been possible to travel the way we did; Sam en Martina, Iris, Steffan, Dino and Michael who saved me from a fight with aggressive drunken locals ;).

Sponsors who helped me out with the ride materials are Moutain Hardwear, Nitro, Mons Royal and Hippie Camper Van.

With our Hippie Camper Van we took the boat back to the South Island to go sea kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park. We got a good kayak and instructions from Abel Tasman Kayaks and started our trip next to the coastline, passing by islands, white beaches, rain-forest, strange birds and rough rock formations. We slept on a beach as you now them from untouched island in movies. The next day we had some good size waves coming up and we almost capsized when we had to paddle to the beach.
We continued our trip to the North West Coast and went three days hiking through the beautiful rain-forest. For the first time we had many hours of sunshine on the West Coast. We crossed rivers through big gorge. I love the intense colors and vegetation that change everywhere in New Zealand.
Our next mission was ice climbing in the Fox glacier. We visited a friend, a local guide, who took us into the Fox Glacier and into the Frans Joseph Glacier. We foud amazing moulins (holes through the ice) in both glaciers. Even our local friend had not ever seen this long moulins. One was high, really narrow and had difficult ice climbing. Iris, a friend of us, almost lost her consciousness because of cold hands and the idea to get stacked in the ice cave. It was narrow and hard ice climbing through a little waterfall. The other moulin into the Frans Joseph glacier was through a little river, over 200 meters long with lots site holes. Not narrow but often very low but then again huge and open. The first exits we found were too narrow to climb trough, but finally we found an exit.
Before we went back to Christchurch we got a heli flight to fligh over the highest mountains from New Zealand and land on the top of the Fox glacier. It was one of the rear blue sky days on the west coast.

Next week I will post some more good pictures.

I felt like I’m ready again for action, so we took the boat up to the North Island. We did some big hikes, the first good weather day we climbed the volcano Mt Ruapehu. Big respect for Mikaela because she hiked with her and my snowboard 1300 vertical meters from warm spring weather to the windy crater. With my broken neck I still can’t handle heavy bag-packs.
The next day I did the Tongariro Alpine crossing. A long hike over and through some volcano’s. When I climbed a ridge, my hands where almost frozen from the extreem wind and minus degrees. Lucky me there where some hot rocks on the top of the red crater.  The days after we hiked and ride more around the volkanos. 

Now I can t jump around I have time for details/ close up and walks.  We drive up to the north island where we will hike in the desert between vulkanos.

We are in Christchurch by Sam and Martina, friends we met in New Zealand. The people in New Zealand coming from many nationalitys, and most of them are very friendly and helpfull. We make relax walks on the beach and through the city. In the evening we watch some footage we made in New Zealand:

Bad luck, after 5 weeks finally fresh snow I planned competitions, heliboarding and hiking tours. I fiend my favorite ski area Temple Basin. After a very nice jump of a cliff with a soft landing f  I fell on a flat part on ice. I broke my 7th spine and my shoulder blade. I got a nice heliflight to the hospital in Greymouth, my room has view over see. No worries, I can already walk around and will be fine.