Daily Tour Notes
The Alpine Climbing Course has been created to cater for fit and motivated people who want to learn modern-day alpine climbing techniques. This course focuses on the development of 'hard skills' pertinent to alpine style mountaineering. The course itself is mountain based where we focus on skill development whilst actually climbing peaks so you get to understand those skills in a real situation and not in an artificial learning environment.
On the successful completion of this course, participants will be capable of utilising their skills to attempt ascents of peaks of moderate nature. What each individual takes away from the course is in partly dependent on their own fitness, objectives and skill level prior to the course but all members should learn the specific skills required to undertake ascents of straightforward to moderately difficult summits. You will gain valuable experience on the course, and we aim to teach you the building blocks for a safe and enjoyable mountaineering career.
Day 1
 The group congregates at our office in Wanaka at 58 McDougall Street to meet the course participants. After everyone is introduced, your guide will outline the course syllabus and the actual venue the course will take place. Next, we get 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 glacier in a couple of days. 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. We travel by road to Fox Glacier township (or Aspiring or Mt Cook) depending on where weather and conditions are best! Please remember a travel bag for use when overnighting in Fox Glacier/Mt Cook village/Wanaka.
Day 2-9
The intervening detail is so much dependant upon the group, the weather, the conditions and the location. We will leave it to your imagination, but the following are the basis of skills taught during the course. However factors such as weather and climbing conditions may, at times, dictate that some skills are not covered in full.
• Basic to advanced snow and ice craft
• Rope skills applicable to alpine climbing
• Glacier travel and crevasse rescue skills
• Weather analysis
• Alpine rock skills
• Introduction to mountain rescue
• Route finding
• Navigation
• Avalanche awareness
Day 10
“A tired group gets up early and drives back to the Fox Glacier and walk 30 minutes up to some steep and overhanging ice faces. Some top ropes are erected and ice anchors practiced. The group descends back to the vans for lunch then return to Wanaka by road to sort out the equipment and debrief the course. The group members decide that after such a successful week it's worth a trip downtown for a group meal and social evening.”
Equipment - please click link to download
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