4 engineers, 4 researchers. 6 males, 2 females. 6 Aussie, 2 European (does the UK count?). Overall, a bunch of beans keen on mountains!
Ash Brennan
Occupation: Honours student (Chemistry)
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 5 years. Trip leader and ex-events coordinator. Climbing, canyoning, hiking… mountaineering?
Why you signed up for the trip: Great opportunity to learn the skills required for a whole new set of adventures!
What you hope to get out of it: I’d like to learn new skills, climb some mountains and try to get more mountaineering trips happening in the club again. Also Puncak Jaya.
Why should UNSWOC do more mountaineering: Because there’s mountains out there!
What will be the biggest challenge: Decision making in a group of 8.
Strength: Moonlight.
Weakness: Snow.
Favourite bit of gear: BD vipers.
Brendon Yiu
Occupation: Graduate Civil Engineer – City of Sydney Council.
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 1.75 (Since March 2018). Noob/Trip Leader/Former Gear Officer. Mainly involved with Climbing and Canyoning.
Why you signed up for the trip: To further explore the outdoors and do more challenging stuff. The foreign environment of snow and ice seems so unknown (as an Australian) and a way to discover the harmony of danger and beauty. The test of my perseverance and persistence is also another reason for me signing up for this trip where I have zero previous experience with snow and ice stuff.
What you hope to get out of it: Upon the completion of this trip, I want to be able to share my skills & experience with other people such as UNSWOC members so they too can strive to complete difficult and new outdoor activities (i.e. Mountaineering). I would be keen to lead the UNSWOC bi-annual ice climbing/snow trip to the Snowy Mountains in Australia to spread my know-how.
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: Given it is an extremely demanding sport from preparation to completion, UNSWOC should be able to have a wide range of capabilities and skills so members can be retained for a longer period of time.
What you think the biggest challenge will be: The Unknown & co-ordination. As there are many facets of this trip which are completely new to me it feels as if anything can happen. The best I can do is preparation – for both brain and brawn. The two are inextricably linked where they complement each other; physical training and learning the ‘technical’ knowledge. From the point of co-ordination, with 8 people sorting out what people need, where they need to go, when they need to get there might be tricky. From food to flights, everyone person is like a puzzle piece with an ever changing shape and making us fit together is challenging.
Strength: Timely. Proficient teamwork skills. King as tracking/planning/costing this trip on Microsoft Excel.
Weakness: Prone to nervousness when facing completely unexpected challenges. Tend to follow a decision once made.
Favourite bit of gear: Currently crampons – they’re so novel! (for now)
Henry Burt
Occupation: Student, Civil Engineering/Commerce (Business Economics)
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 2 years 8 months, mostly climbing. Newbie, Trip Leader, Treasurer, Training Officer.
Why you signed up for the trip: Mountaineering was something that always interested me a lot growing up. After doing some climbing in Nepal the memories of suffering quickly faded whilst positive memories stayed and left me motivated to move forward and learn more skills to increase the safety, technicality and efficiency of future mountaineering pursuits.
What you hope to get out of it:
Why should UNSWOC do more mountaineering: I think in some contexts it would have to be the purest outdoor sport. Currently the barriers are reasonably high living in Australia, but it’s something that a lot of club people would excel at and embrace.
What will be the biggest challenge: Being trapped in small huts for extended periods of time without much freedom to move if it’s dark or cold outside. Maria’s farts in enclosed spaces (Maria disagrees). Logistics of having lots of different people climbing and doing what they want.
Strength: Subconsciously managing to place any gear other than my own before big whips.
Weakness: Washing and showering regularly, eating too much, cockroaches.
Favourite bit of gear: No piece of gear can come close to the black totem cam.
Jeffrey Kwan
Occupation: PhD student (Mathematics)
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 1 year 2 months. From gumby to treasurer. Mostly climbing
Why you signed up for the trip: Really enjoy rock climbing and the outdoors. Mountaineering seems like the next logical step if I want to take it further. Also how cool is ice-climbing!
What you hope to get out of it: Get a taste of what mountaineering is like. Learn about snow safety and be able to enjoy the sport safely and also to go on an epic adventure with my friends!
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: Why not?!
What you think the biggest challenge will be: The mental game. Its going to be hard physically but to persevere and stay calm in a stressful and potentially dangerous environment will be the real deal. Also not being able to shower for a month and how many pairs of underwear should I bring?!?!?!
Strength: Pretty empathetic.
Weakness: My head game, I get frustrated and bored relatively quickly. Even though I don’t give up easily, feelings of defeat or powerlessness certainly frustrates me sometimes.
Favourite bit of gear: Currently my 40L alpine pack. It has these straps to put your ice-axes on and they look so ~ alpine.
Jenny Stansby
Occupation: PhD student (Chemistry)
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 2 years 2 months. Trip leader/Ex-President/Current Vice President. Climbing, canyoning, rogaining, mountaineering!
Why you signed up for the trip: The opportunity was too good to turn down. See also first post (https://beanie-grant.unswoc.org/2019/11/05/aid-climbing-101/).
What you hope to get out of it: I hope to gain the skills to become an independent mountaineer, be able to share those skills with other club members and discover whether becoming a mountain guide is something I would seriously like to pursue.
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: It’s the ultimate outdoor pursuit in my opinion!
What you think the biggest challenge will be: The logistics, compromises and decision making associated with having a decent sized group. Also going back to PhD life after the trip.
Strength: Pretty good head game.
Weakness: Being considerate of other people’s comfort levels, particularly in the context of my own adventures. For example, finishing multi-pitches in the dark!
Favourite bit of gear: Depends on the situation but right now cat. 2-4 sunglasses.
Maria Lastra Cagigas
Occupation: PhD student (Medical Sciences)
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: Since 2015. Newbie / Trip leader / Trip coordinator / President. Climbing, the bigger the wall, the more I like it.
Why you signed up for the trip: When I turned 18, my dad gave me a book about the greater explorers of our world. The alpine climbers were always my favourite. My goal is to become a mountaineer, so that’s why we started the trip!
What you hope to get out of it: In 1.5 years time I want to organise an UNSWOC trip to Patagonia and be like, yay, we have the skills to climb those mountains independently.
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: Mountaineering is arguably the most technical, most demanding, most dangerous and most awesome discipline the UNSWOC offers. Great challenges bring great rewards, and an outdoors club cannot be fulfilled without climbing big mountains.
What you think the biggest challenge will be: Food is organised in pairs so sharing with Henry will be a challenge for sure haha. Jokes aside, the biggest challenge will be making compromises and reaching common ground, above everything else we are a team.
Strength: Work well under pressure, don’t give up, love motivating the team.
Weakness: I care about achieving so sometimes I’m too direct / not considerate enough when giving my opinion, especially in challenging environments (but not bad intentions).
Favourite bit of gear: A good headtorch gives me peace of mind in the bush.
Matthew Notarangelo
Occupation: Electrical engineer
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 2 years. Trip leader. Caving, canyoning, climbing.
Why you signed up for the trip: I kept seeing cool videos of people (Richard Pattison) climbing mountains in Europe and saw an opportunity to do that for myself. I figured that it would be pretty difficult to get into mountaineering otherwise so I wanted to learn the skills early.
What you hope to get out of it: I’m hoping to get the skills needed to plan future expeditions to more mountainous areas like the United States or Canada. Outdoors skills are generally transferable to most other adventurous sports so I’m looking forward to passing these on to future club members.
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: Even though options for mountaineering are limited in Australia, this trip will undoubtedly inspire other members to learn and commit to their own adventures.
What you think the biggest challenge will be: Definitely coordination. With 8 people, trying to figure out gear, flights, insurance, transport and food has proved difficult.
Strength: Getting work done under pressure.
Weakness: Moderate head game, weak packing skills.
Favourite bit of gear: I’ve owned a figure 8 for a while but have only started using it lately. Not as good as an ATC but it’s different.
Stephen Roche
Occupation: Casual researcher (quantum computing) and teaching programming at UNSW.
Years/involvement/main activities in the club: 4 years 9 months. Trip leader/Gear guy. Mainly climbing, canyoning and hiking (incl. one previous Beanie Grant trip to Tasmania).
Why you signed up for the trip: Mountaineering was always on my radar as something I wanted to try ‘sometime’ in the future. The perfect opportunity just turned up a lot sooner than I expected and I jumped at the chance! (To do it within the supportive environment of the club and with people I trusted and loved spending time outdoors with).
What you hope to get out of it: To learn the skills to go mountaineering independently, and to be able to pass on those skills to club members in the Snowies. Also to get a better appreciation of my attitude to risk and how far I want to push myself outdoors.
Why UNSWOC should do more mountaineering: The same reason we do everything else in the club; because people enjoy doing this stuff and the club is a great place to introduce people to new sports and teach new skills.
What you think the biggest challenge will be: The general travel logistics have already been pretty tricky with eight people, and assessing what objectives are within our skill level with our limited experience.
Strength: Hill sprints and interest in rope skills.
Weakness: My level of faff with getting prepared to leave for the day and organising meals. Coogee Death Stairs.
Favourite bit of gear: After testing them out on our training trip the Four Mile Hut, honestly my seriously hydrophobic alpine pants with full side zips. Nothing feels better than ample ventilation on an uphill slog.