From the President…in July

Snowcraft has characterised July for me. We’ve had twenty keen members learning how to travel on snow with and without sharp metal tools (ice axes and crampons) for two of the four July weekends. Thanks to the WTMC Lodge for hosting us and to everyone involved with organising or participating in this course. I’m looking forward to getting out on some alpine trips with everyone….hopefully with a little more sunshine than Ruapehu has brought us recently!

In-keeping with ‘Plastic Free July’, we took the opportunity to set aside as much of the soft plastic that we generated over the snowcraft lodge weekends as we could and bring it back to the collection points at our local supermarket. We unfortunately don’t have the facility to recycle soft plastics at the lodge (we can do cardboard/paper, cans and hard plastics though 😊) so anything you can take away for recycling yourself helps.

 

MTB @ WTMC

Byron and Garth are planning some regular outings for those who want to go mountain biking on their ‘in-town’ weekends (apparently some people have such things!). The idea is to keep things simple and just name a time and a place for a Saturday morning start for anyone who wants to join in. Grab them at a club night or look their email addresses up on the printed schedule if you want to be added to the mailing list.

 

Changing Gear

Nick, our trusty gear custodian, is unfortunately stepping aside from his role to head off on other adventures. No worries though, as Yenfei, trusty-gear-custodian-in-training, is stepping in to the role. Many thanks to Nick for his dedication to the gear cupboard over the past couple of years and to Yenfei for agreeing to become chief peg-and-plb monitor.

While I’m talking about gear, just a reminder to check the condition and contents of any gear you are taking out BEFORE you set off on your trip. Arriving at the road end on a Friday evening without any fly pegs might not be the best way to start off your tramp!

 

Helping Out

There’s a few jobs we’re looking for people to help with at the moment:

• Mark, our emergency contacts coordinator, needs some more volunteers to be the club emergency contact for upcoming weekends. There’s some more info here and contact if you’d like to see the roster and sign up.
• Van cleaning – one van now has a cleaner thanks to Matt, but the other one could still do with a dedicated chief washer (ideally on a monthly basis). This task involves taking the van through the carwash at a local fuel station (you can use the van fuel card to cover the cost) preferably mid-week as the vans are usually AWOL at the weekends. Email if you can help out.

 

August is when the alpine trips start to ramp up, but there’s also plenty of tramping trips to choose from so check out the schedule. We’ve also got the WTMC Annual Photo Competition on Wednesday 8^th August.

I’m always happy to take suggestions if there’s things you think should be included in this monthly update. Just let me know via

 

Emily

WTMC President