First thing I should do is apologise for the lateness of this post.
The course officially began with an early start on Monday morning. We were all very keen to get into the mountains, so we had breakfast and looked to Paul and Tim for further instructions. Introductions were made, and it was quickly established that Paul and Tim were experienced mountaineers. Paul was an English Navy Seal type guy, while Tim seemed a lot more friendly.
The first order of business was a gear check. This involved taking out all our gear to ensure that each person owned the required gear and any excess gear wasn’t taken up. I had discovered that the snow pegs I brought to NZ were not required, and that I brought too many pairs of underpants. We made sure to leave “luxury” items like deodorant in the cars.
It was quickly realised (probably from Paul’s ‘encouragement’) that the mountains are extremely unforgiving, and any mistakes are likely to be serious. For example, if you forget to bring any gear you can’t just run back to the car to get it. Since you’re only taking the essentials this is actually a big issue. This is where we learnt that Maria’s boots were not up to the task (club gear…) and that Jeffrey didn’t have a pair of hardshell pants. After a stern (possibly frightening?) talking to from Paul, we were packing up gear again to head off.
One issue that was brushed over was about our pack sizes. It was very quickly realised in Australia that not all the gear could fit in a 60L pack. That much was obvious. Even without food, getting the gear into our packs proved difficult. The solution was to put whatever we could on the outside. That meant the snow shovel, snow stake, pegs, ice axes, crampons, probe, and snow shoes.
Food wasn’t really discussed until the very last minute. We were all wondering how we’d stuff a weeks’ worth of food into our already overflowing packs, when Paul/Tim said we could use their duffel bags to drag our food in on the approach (this idea was eventually scrapped – see course day 3).
Since we were getting a helicopter in, we had to make sure the balance was correct otherwise there would be a risk of crashing. This meant each getting weighed with gear. After this and a quick safety briefing, we all climbed into the helicopter and were on our way. … No, wait. That’s not what happened. After waiting around for a while, we were told that the weather was changing and that we couldn’t fly in today. We returned to Unwin Lodge disappointed.
Although saddened, we were still keen to learn about mountaineering skills. With all our gear ready, we headed to the famous bridge (not famous, but we would go there over the next 2 days as well). We started by learning how to rope up for glacier travel. Although confusing the first time, it quickly got committed to memory. With coils on, we set up anchors on the bridge and simulated a crevasse rescue. One person was lowered down off the bridge and had to prussik up. This was done a few more times with multiple variations – with a pack on, assisted hauling (with a micro-traxion, garda hitch), and ascending with prussiks and an ATC in guide mode. The easiest was using the micro-traxion in place of a prussik, but I found it very easy to use just a leg prussik with an assisted haul.
Overall a fairly disappointing day, but we were excited to start our mountaineering adventures.