Alpine Climbing Course

Today you'll meet your guide and other group participants at 8.30am in Aoraki Mount Cook Village for a briefing. After everyone is introduced, your guide will outline the course syllabus and confirm the actual venue where course will take place, which will depend on conditions. There will be time together to discuss and then organise our personal and group equipment (bring all your gear with you, including those items you are not sure whether to include or not). Equipment pertinent to the course will be discussed and you can get all the advice you need concerning equipment from the guides. Anyone requiring rental equipment will be fitted at this time (but please advise in advance of your requirements to ensure you are catered to) and final purchases can be made. Food is pre-sorted for the trip by the guides to save time. It's very important to ration food effectively, too much and your packs become overly heavy, too little and you starve! Basic rope skills and tying in are covered to ensure consistency and revision for those who already have rope skills. This enables us to get right into it when we reach the mountains. Trip planning is covered followed by rescue first aid and decision-making. Once all this is completed we pack up for the trip. Excess items can be left at our office for storage. You will then take your helicopter or ski plane flight into the mountains, taking in the awesome peaks of the region you will be soon scaling. The fly in is generally planned for late morning, or early afternoon. After landing, it may be a short stroll across to your hut - or you may need to rope up for glacier travel and haul your gear and food for up to 30 minutes to the hut. Our guide will welcome you to your mountain home for the week and introduce you to "hut etiquette'. An initial familiarisation talk to clarify nomenclature and identify the peaks will help you absorb this wonderful environment before moving into the more practical elements of the trip. We utilise the hut system in the region when they are not too full and we move our gear in before we sort ourselves to get out onto the snow. The group ropes up for crevasse travel training and we go for a walk on the glacier. Our other mountaineering gear is introduced as we go along with the rudimentary techniques needed for mountaineering - use of an ice axe, learning to crampon and to self-arrest. The first day out in the mountains is always exciting and eventually we will retire to the hut for a team cook-up and maybe a lesson on weather forecasting while watching the sunset.

*Please note you will need to arrive in Aoraki Mount Cook Village the day before the trip starts as day 1 will be an early start.

Your course will be based from one of several mountain huts across Aoraki Mount Cook National Park. The venue used for each course is selected by your guide, based on upcoming weather and general snow conditions. Some of the options include Barron saddle, Grand Plateau or Tasman saddle. The itinerary is flexible and strikes a balance between instruction and climbing, with building core competencies and skill development at the core. Once the key self arrest and crampon skills are instilled, the focus moves to climbing, rope and anchor skills, glacier travel and mountain weather, fostering the confidence to undertake climbing trips in glaciated alpine zones. Expect early mornings with 'alpine starts' if a longer ascent is planned for the day and to be active for at least 8-10 hours a day. There will be time in crevasses to practice rescue skills, where we each take turns to jump into the crevasse while our climbing partners hold our falls. They then carefully pull us up out of the crevasse then we swap around. There will be time spent ice climbing, with the chance to hang onto those tools and find the balance point on the crampons. Navigation is a crucial skill and can mean the difference between comfort and concern in the mountains. By knowing these skills one can actually avoid ever getting (completely) lost. Weather lessons, avalanche awareness lectures, time to practice placing and equalising snow, ice and rock anchors and discussions on crevasse rescue theory is all included, with a balance between theory and practical skills. There will be opportunities for the course participants to consolidate the skills acquired under the watchful eyes of the guides. Mountain weather conditions will govern our activities for the day, with instruction closer to the hut in poor weather. A welcome cup-a-tea greets you at the hut after each challenging yet rewarding day out, expect to return to the hut tired and elated, then it's time for a game of cards before dinner. The time in the mountains provides the perfect introduction to the world of alpine climbing in glaciated terrain.

There are opportunities to utilise our navigation skills and it's a good chance for the course members to practise these skills. Generally we will hike down the Tasman Glacier for about 8 km to be picked up by the aircraft from the White Ice area (weather permitting). You must always be prepared and fit enough to walk out if weather conditions will not allow for aircraft pick-up. Weather must also be suitable to allow safe travel on foot. Depending on the hut used, the walk may take anywhere from 4-9 hours. Depending on our return timing, there may be a chance to practice some rock climbing on the local crags. By mid-afternoon everyone is rather tired, it’s been an action packed 7 days so it’s back to the office to sort out the equipment and debrief the course, after which our trip will conclude at around 5pm.