In early August eight students and two adults headed to Mt Dobson for a week of Alpine experience.

On Sunday we travelled down to Raincliff Lodge and set up a Marae style sleeping arrangement where we all camped out in the hall for the night. 

On Monday we headed up to Mt Dobson ski field where we started our Alpine journey. We started our trek by walking up the mountain learning skills on how to stay safe and walk in an Alpine environment. After a good afternoon up the mountain, we then headed back to the lodge, one person with stitches.

On Tuesday we packed fully for our overnight tramp. We started off by learning how crampons worked and we then we walked up to base camp using crampons due to the snow being a lot firmer than the day before. We learned skills such as how to self arrest if we were in a risky situation in an Alpine environment. 

Next we made a snow mound but unfortunately, the temperature wasn't lower than 0 degrees so we were unable to spend the night in our snow mound. This was still a fun task to do to create a snow mound properly. We found this snow mound would have been a lot warmer than the tents we slept in that night. After setting up our tents for the night we cooked freeze-dried food and soup to keep us warm and full for the night ahead. After a night in the tent, we woke up at 5 am to trek up to the top of Mt Dobson to watch the sunrise. This was challenging but was a great success once we were up the top watching the sunrise and a great view of Mt Cook.

On Wednesday we packed up camp and learnt about avalanches and how to survive and save each other if stuck in this situation. We also learnt about transceivers and how these work and keep us safe in an Alpine environment. In the afternoon we headed back down to camp to pack up and head home. 

This experience was life-changing and filled with lots of skills for the future, maybe even future alpine trips. We had lots of fun learning these skills and pushing ourselves to the limit. A group highlight was watching the sunset and the sense of achievement knowing we had completed a week filled with sweat and tears. 

Special thanks to Paddy, Jess, Matt and Mrs Don you guys made this trip worthwhile and couldn't have done it without you.

By: Ollie Graham and Ashley Riley.