South Africa Climbing Trip

During my junior year winter break, I had the wonderful chance to go on a climbing trip sponsored by Dartmouth’s “Schlitz” adventure fund. I spent 3 weeks hiking, camping, road tripping, and climbing along the coast of South Africa with Catherine, Matt, and Sheppard. From leading a 5.11c to stumbling upon a man's (massive) marijuana farm, to huddling inside a tent during the mother-of-all thunderstorms, to being confronted by the reality of a country's racial and social divide and experiencing firsthand what it meant to have a severe water shortage, this adventure ended up being so much more than just a climbing trip. It was as much a lesson in the extent of my American privilege as it was a journey through the most beautiful, breathtaking parts of South Africa, and I'm so grateful to have experienced all of this with three wonderful, thoughtful friends.

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Trip Video and Reflections



I shot this video on an iPhone 6 and edited with Premier Pro for the first time. While I had done some video editing before with iMovie, I wanted to push myself to create something better with more sophisticated software. I learned quite a bit about film editing and will definitely try to make some more trip videos going forward, hopefully with a better camera! (narrator: she still has not gotten a camera). Most of the footage was captured for fun without the intention of turning the clips into a film, so I'm hoping that being more intentional about the shots will create better results in the future (narrator: and she still has crap footage). All that being said, I ended up submitting this project to our school’s Moosilauke Film Festival, and it came in first woohoo!



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