“Dan has just advised us he is vegetarian and doesn’t eat meat, whereas I don’t like vegetables (or fish and especially not mushrooms)” Craig Robinson, Merewyn Ellis and Caroline Duggan along with Daniel Allan and Rob Lawrence from Otago were participants on the NZAC Alpine Instructors Course held at Porter Lodge over Feb 6-11 2005. “I taught Judy Reid to climb and she was pretty old then” The course was run by two qualified mountain guides, Paul Rogers and Tim Robertson, and looked at, amongst other things, contemporary best practice in the mountains and skills/techniques we could use as recreational climbers. “Its pretty hard to get lucky in Antarctica, and I was on the job at the time” The weather and conditions conspired against us so instead of flying into Pioneer Hut for the 6 days on day 1 it was off to the lower Fox Glacier for some crevasse travel and rescue skills. ‘I’ve got one student un-tying himself from his belay and another rescuer who is almost halfway down the crevasse!” On day 2 it rained. “I’ve just about knitted a sleeve – that’s how titillating it’s been” Each of the sets of participants was tasked with providing dinner for the instructors. That night Paul and Tim went to a restaurant while we cooked at Porter Lodge. “What are you wearing under your leggings tomorrow?” Day 3 saw a weather window and we flew up to Chancellor Dome for a skills day looking at Mt Cook grading, route selection, rope configurations, kiwi coils, mountaineers coils, pitching styles, anchors, steep glaciated terrain travel and crevasse travel. Somewhere below Chancellor Dome in “the trough” is the last few metres from either end of Dan’s rope. “Our beloved guides” While Merewyn snored through the late night debrief at Chancellor Hut the rest of us agreed we would like to walk out down the Fox Glacier on Day 4. “That’s a great bogger!” The walk down the Fox covered the issues of route selection and peril detection associated with dry ice travel and the moraine walls surrounding an advancing glacier. “Mountains are the best place for murder” It took approximately 8 hours to get back onto the cut steps of the lower glacier in beautiful weather, followed by a quick dip in one of the glacial ponds next to the car park. Beer. On day 5 it was back to the glacier for some lead ice climbing and comparisons of the different array of hardware between us. “That’s the steepest tramp I’ve ever been on!” Having done Fox we left that evening for Castle Hill. Day 6 and we were into the National Office to store gear for the day (not that we are intimating anything about the thieves of ChCh) and collect some more rock pro (thanks Richard and Mark). After coffee it was up to Castle Rock in our full alpine gear to look at rock protection, anchor systems, abseil anchors and their significance in the NZ mountains. We ended with a paired abseil in the rain. Back at the National Office was a good chance to debrief the course and provide Richard with valuable feedback to improve the course for next time. “Leave only footprints, take only liberties” For myself I found the 6 days to be very valuable, learning some new techniques and consolidating others and getting the chance to discuss with members of other sections about our different instruction programs. Thanks are due to Richard Wesley, Judy Reid and the National Office for arranging the course and Paul and Tim for sharing their expertise with us for 6 days.