For a long time after his catastrophic accident, elite mountain climber David Vass avoided looking out the windows of his Wānaka home.
Seeing the mountain scenery of Otago – the backdrop of where he’d spent much of his life climbing – was too much of a “continual slap in the face”.
As a way of coping, wheelchair-bound David moved away from the mountains to Christchurch. It’s here he came to terms with a completely different existence of life, found healing in