Date: 21/09/2012
Location: Temple Basin
Weather: Fine and Hot
Duration: 1 day
Group: 8 DOIG students along with Paula Roberts and Keith Riley as our Tutors
Today was our Assessment for Mountain. we started with a few pitches up the Downhill Chutes the first anchor I made was less than perfect. I hadn't done any pitching for a while so I was a bit rusty but quickly got back into it. We then roped up for glacier travel and abseiled down before walking down to the vans.
Mountain Camp (I)
Date: 31/07/2012 - 03/08/2012
Location: Broken River, Avalanche Peak, Devils Punchbowl Falls Track.
Weather: rain changing to snow clearing later in the week.
Duration: 4 days
Group: Rata Lovell-Smith, Chris tipper and myself. The tutor was Paula Roberts.
took a group of 9 students and 1 teacher from Buller High School up to the mountains for the week. Due to bad weather and horrible snow cover we made the decision to go to Broken River over Temple Basin. on the mountain we went over walking with ice axes and crampons, transceiver searches and self arresting. on day 3 we went up avalanche peak but we had to abandon the summit attempt due to snow conditions. but we managed to cover step cutting which completed the unit for the students with every one passing. the last day we had limited time so we went for a walk and went over some basic survival knowledge like survival kits, shelters and improvised shelters. then it was back to Greymouth for a quick pack up and debrief and the kids were off.
Alpine Rock (TPP)
Date: 2nd - 4th May
Location: Temple basin
Weather: Clear all week
Duration: 3 days
Group: 8 DOIG students and tutors Paula Roberts and Jamie
Key Learning: Moving together, abseiling
Spent 3 days up in the authors pass area looking to do a Phips, Temple traverse and climb Mt Philistine in the end we did the traverse in 11 hours from the hut back to the car park. things were interesting on this trip we had a fair amount of snow in many sections of the ridge and often going was tough.
Thanks to luke for the photos.
Coming up the ridge.
The Crux.
Chilling on the ridge.
Fox/Franz Josef Neve (TPP)
Date: 18th - 24th February
Location: Fox and Franz Josef Glacier
Weather: 2 days clear followed by cloud and rain
Duration: 5 days in the Neve 2 days in Greymouth
Group: 8 DOIG students and tutors Paula Roberts and Jamie
Key Learning: Glacier travel, crevasse rescue, working with helicopters, snow anchors, multi pitching, abseiling.
We left early on Saturday with a clear window for a few days when we arrived we quickly loaded up the helicopters and jumped in, this was my first flight in a helicopter and it was awesome. We flew up the Fox Glacier and went through Newton pass and landed above Centenial hut this was our base for the four days. the first day we had a walk around on the ice and learnt to rope up for glacier travel. the second day we walked up to Graham Saddle and then up Moonlight Peak practicing snow anchors and multi pitching. day three the cloud started to come through and we practiced assisted hoists in the hut and then found a crevasse in the afternoon and prussoked out and practiced assisted hoists. on day four the weather had deteriorated and we spent the day in the hut learning systems like the unassisted hoist, escaping the system, using ATC guides. on the 5th day there was a window to get out in the morning our pick up was scheduled for 9.30. we headed up to the heli pad Early and practiced anchors in different snow conditions and at 9.25 the cloud came in and made pick up impossible so we went back to the hut. and radioed in we then had a pick up at 10.30 we decided to go below the hut for the next pick up and ran down when we found a place we radioed in and the helicopters came in and picked us up. we spent the afternoon at the bottom of Franz Josef glacier practising assisted and unassisted hoists. the next two days were spent at the climbing wall in grey where we did more rope work and some rock climbing.
Thanks to Rata for the photos.
Glacier Travel.
Rope work on the hut day.
Epic views from Centenial Hut.
The Pick up.
Temple Basin (TPP)
Date: 23rd - 26th August
Location: Temple
Weather: overcast
Duration: 4 days
Group: Outdoor recreation group 1
Key Learning: self arresting, snow anchors, multi pitching, transceiver searching, digging snow caves, snow pits.
Incidents: Adam and Owen were jumping on a cornice and it broke and Owen got hit in the nose by a crampon.
An interesting week. it was good to see the ski field from a different view and i gained a greater appreciation for the tows. the first day we spent learning to self arrest on the walking track and down on the right side of Temple tow. the second day we learnt how to walk on steep terrain and rock with crampons and during this Owen and Adam had been jumping on a small cornice and it collapsed below them Owen ended up with Adams crampon going through his nose. once we had fixed up Owen we hiked up to bills Basin and dug some snow pits and assessed the snow pack and set up snow anchors. the third day we hiked up to Bills Basin again and multi pitched up the summit of Blimit and then walked back down and got started on digging out some snow caves. it was a weird experience sleeping in a snow cave it was surprisingly warm and i really enjoyed the experience. on the last day we packed up and went to the lodge for breakfast and practiced our transceiver searches. I had some trouble with using my new transceiver i got a Tracker and i was confused with the numbers thinking it stood for meters. Dave helped me and i soon got the hang of it but i still need more practice. last we had a race to see who could dig out 1.5 m deep to the end of a probe the times varied from 6 to 8 Minuit's which could be faster so i also need to work on that. it was a great week i learnt heaps and ski mountaineering seems like an appealing path for me.
Thank you to Greg Lee and Astria Miller for the photos.
Owens nose fixed up nicely.
Testing snow anchors.
Me near the summit of Blimit.
Greg digging a snow cave.
View of Mt Rolleston from the hut.
Ice Climbing (TPP)
Date: 14th-16th June
Location: Frans Josef Glacier
Weather: Clear first day, rain second day, fine with some cloud third day
Duration: 14 hours
Group: Outdoor recreation Group 1
Incidents: None
A really cool experience i had never been on a glacier before so it was all new to me i was slightly nervous when we were setting up the ice screws for our anchors but once we got Climbing i loved it. we had rain the first day of climbing so we were all really wet and cold and to wake up on the last day to see it all clear we were all stoked to be heading back out once we got up there we set up our anchors and were lowered into a big crevasse and then began climbing we got a few climbs in each then climbed back over the top and headed back to Greymouth.
The group.
