By Jack Huygens, Tommy Thomson, 09 August 2024
Snowcraft I
I had just got back from Midwinter, and I was launched into a frenzy of emails, organizing Snowcraft 1 in just 5 days. But, despite my state of extreme stress and panic(or maybe because of it), 23 of us made it to Tararua Lodge with most of the gear we needed; minus Sandeep who forgot his boots, drove all the way back home, and decided it wasn’t worth driving back again.
The weather on Saturday dawned fine and we set off surprisingly early to head up towards Delta Corner and the West, in 3 groups of around 8 with 2 leaders each. The snow cover was good, there were patches of ice and patches of slush, so we could learn all the skills we needed. For dinner we had copious quantities of curry, with jelly for dessert.
On Sunday we got to enjoy a lesson on avalanche safety from our resident professional ski touring guide Hugo, which was excellent.
- Tommy
Snowcraft II
The second snowcraft begins early, with a big group of most of our experienced leaders heading over to Ruapehu at 5am to spend a day ice climbing. The unintended consequence of this is that it's now up to just Jack and Patrick to wrangle all the snowcraft punters back in Wellington. This makes for a rather chaotic start as neither of us quite know how to get to the TTC lodge, so we muck around trying out a few different routes before getting there much later than hoped. Though much like snowcraft 1, we get exceptional luck with the weather. We spend a full day on the mountain doing everything we hoped for, including a purpose-carved self arresting slide and an interactive avalanche rescue gear demonstration.
We got even more cracker weather on Sunday, so we were able to run a bunch of proper trips on the mountain before heading home, including a rather advanced Grand-Pinnacle climb, a much easier Pinnacle ridge trip, and best of all, a summit trip!
- Jack
