Proud To Be Me is a series telling the stories of Selwyn people. This week, Coen Lammers speaks to Castle Hill mountain guide Anna Keeling about a life shaped by alpine adventures.

Anna Keeling is deeply connected to the mountains and ski-fields around her home in Castle Hill, but her career has taken her all over the world.

Keeling’s schedule is mind-boggling to say the least, taking clients backcountry skiing across North America, Europe or New Zealand, between guiding mountaineering expeditions across the Himalayas or Africa, while she also trains new guides at home and the US.

The 56-year-old admits her life can be a bit hectic, but she says her lifestyle is a privilege and makes sure she has plenty of breaks in her diary to regroup.

“Right now I am on a two-week break, but saying that I just got a call to work on a film-shoot, so we are currently dashing through a storm to get to Salt Lake City,” tells Keeling who just returned from training guides in Alaska and is soon off to Norway to guide a group of regulars, before attending  technical meetings for the International Federation of Mountain Guides in Austria as president of the New Zealand Mountain Guiding Association.

“It’s a pretty exciting lifestyle,” laughs Keeling, who shares her nomadic existence with husband and documentary maker Scott.

The family splits their year between their home in Castle Hill and their second base in Utah and their schedule was largely based around the schooling of son Obie.

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“When Obie was at primary school in New Zealand, we spent half of the year there, and when he attended high school in the US, we spent most of the time in Utah. Now he has started studying at the University of Canterbury, we will probably spend a lot more time in Castle Hill,” says Keeling who grew up in Redcliffs in an outdoor family where life was dominated by yachting and skiing.

“We had pretty inspiring outdoor education teachers at Linwood High School and my family was heavily involved in Porter Heights, so my brother and I grew up ski racing and then adventure racing”.

Keeling was one of the pioneers of adventure racing, winning the world’s first modern adventure race, Raid Gauloises in 1989, with Steve Gurney, Sandy Sandblom, John Howard and Russell Prince, and was one of the first women to win the Coast-to-Coast Longest Day event in 1990.

“I loved that. I liked competing, but it was more about the adventure of it, doing things that you weren't sure you could do, pushing yourself and exploring beautiful places.”

The prize money enabled the Lincoln University student to travel and try skiing on a ski mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas, where she met mountain guides, who inspired her to embark on a career that shaped her life.

Keeling developed a successful business that takes clients back-country skiing or mountaineering around the globe at one stage did 33 winters in a row between the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

Even for a ski enthusiast, there can be such a thing as too much snow, and Keeling admits sometimes she has to get away from the snow.

“We have a cabin in the Utah desert and the desert is a great antidote. And we just spent a summer in New Zealand pack rafting, which was a nice change.”

Keeling says she loves being home at Castle Hill and the variety of the Selwyn District, whether she is climbing the mountains, rafting the rivers or enjoying the skiing a social aspects of the many ski-fields in the region.

“Stu from Chill and I created a product where we take clients over the top from Craigieburn to Mount Olympus and we call it the Haute Route, which is a really famous ski touring route in Europe from Chamonix to Zermatt. We thought it would be fun to create our own Haute Route in Selwyn,” says Keeling.

“Yes, I’m a big fan of Selwyn and take full advantage of all it has to offer.”

Last modified: 16 Apr 2026 2:35pm