Practice for Boyle River Camp

On Tuesday the Year 12 and 13 ABM class embarked on a mission to the Groynes, Christchurch, to take part in a High ropes course. This course was to prepare us and give us the necessary skills required for our Boyle river camp at the end of Term 2. We had two great instructors and they helped us all immensely.

First off we began by doing some group activities. Our instructors asked us to do these activities without verbal communication meaning that we had to use teamwork and alternative forms of conveying information to achieve. We then sat down and had a talk about what we wanted to get out of the day's lesson. For me and my partner, we decided we wanted to work on our communication. Throughout the day we worked on these skills.

We then had a quick break before going on to learn how to belay our class members and then began to do some climbing. We worked in groups of three or four, one of us climbing, one of us belaying the climber and the other one being the backup belayer. While we were climbing, we had to have complete trust in the person belaying us because they were in complete control of us if we fell down. This trust meant that we had to communicate with our belayer and vice versa to make sure they had enough slack or if the rope was tight enough.

Later in the day, we moved onto more team based activities like the giants ladder, this was basically just a big ladder where the rungs got further and further apart the higher up you went. We climbed this in pairs which meant we had to use different tactics to help each other up so we both made it to the top. This meant that we had to use each other to climb on or one of us pulling the other up to the top. This was an awesome experience for me because working with a slightly smaller partner meant that we had to find different ways that worked for us to get to the top, therefore helping my communication skills and having trust in my partner so we both succeeded. We also did a leap of faith, this meant that our group members were holding us up when we jumped off the pole. Doing the leap of faith meant that not only did we have to trust our team members to hold us up in the air once we had jumped but they also had to trust us to actually jump off the platform so they didn’t pull us off.

At the very end of the day we split off into groups and had a talk about how our day had been individually. We all enjoyed listening to each other and made sure that everyone was included in sharing their thoughts. This debrief helped us realise what skills we had taken away from the day and how we could apply them to our camp at the end of the term.

Overall it was an amazing day. There was a great energy at the course and everyone seemed like they were having heaps of fun. We all learnt something new or worked on skills that we already had. Meaning that now we will all be ready for Boyle river camp, bring it on!