Year 9 Adventurers Hazel Passmore, Hunter Whitmarsh and Levi Symons, Devesh Kumar, Matthew Campbell, and Santos Rai give us the run through their term of Adventure Education.

In Year 9 Adventure Education, Term 4, the two Year 9 classes have learnt a variety of important safety techniques to have a fun and enjoyable adventure experience.

As part of the course, students learned about the importance of Te Ao Māori. New Zealand was created as a partnership with Māori and the British Crown. We need to work together to preserve our environment - Mahi Tahi: E hara taku toa i te toa takitahi he toa takatini. We recognised that our strength is not as an individual but as a collective.

Both classed depicted this topic in different ways and students in each class worked together.

The course aims to help us for adventures in life. All adventures need resilience. Pakari: He toka tu moana - resilience: as durable as a rock pounded by the surf. This means that when we persevere we discover joy in life.

Throughout this whole term we have also learnt how to read a map, do bearings, co-ordinates, distance, time with elevation calculations. This helped us with the calculations on our tramp in which we used for our final assessment.

The last thing we had to do before heading off on our tramp is the preparations. We had to create a food group and decide on four very important meals; two lunches, one breakfast and one dinner. We learnt how to use the gas cookers and even got to make some yummy milo. During our physical activity sessions we learnt about teamwork and working as one.

Another very important thing about going on a tramp is appropriate clothing. On this tramp we had to bring warm clothes such as polyprops / thermals, fleece jackets and pants, a rain jacket and clothing for the hut.

All of this provided us with warmth especially at night when the sun went down. Other than fleece there are many other fibres great at keeping you warm including merino wool, wool, and polypropylene. One thing you should definitely not bring when going on a cold tramp is cotton as cotton is known for soaking up sweat and absorbing moisture, overall, chilling you.

Our tramp on the Orongorongo Track to Turere Lodge was a great trip. It took about four hours to make it into the Lodge. We arrived at the hut where we were taught about hut etiquette (keeping the hut clean, tidying up after yourself and managing yourself).

Our amazing teachers came up with lots of physical activities once we got there such as spotlight in the dark and following a night line (a rope through the forest) and Sardines.

Overall we walked for about eight hours over the two days. The tramp was a wonderful and enjoyable experience that takes little effort for so much fun, and it allowed everyone to get an amazing taster into their own adventure journey.