Having been awarded the beanie grant, the next task was to finalise the course provider, course dates and discuss flights! We met at 6.30pm on Wednesday 12th and talked over Nachos.
Course provider
Several mountaineering courses in NZ had been researched prior to our beanie grant presentation. We decided on the NZAC for the following reasons:
- best value for money
- being from an outdoors club, we expected our goals to align better with an alpine club than private guides
- the NZAC has an Australian section; we could potentially join one of their trips before going on the course
- recommended by Alastair (member of the New Zealand Alpine Team)
Course dates
Not much flexibility here – had to be over the Christmas break. We are extremely grateful to the NZAC club guides and programme coordinator for scheduling an additional course close to the Christmas break especially for UNSWOC – it’s often worth asking!
Flights
Note the word discuss in the opening paragraph, it wasn’t until September (and in some cases last week!) that we booked our flights. We have probably spent more time discussing logistics and gear than we will spend mountaineering!
Training
Another topic of discussed at the meeting was training – find out about our mountaineering specific training in the next post!