The nature of things – April 2013

With daylight saving ending and snow beginning in the South Island Summer has taken the hint and moved on. Check out the Winter trip schedule that Amanda is currently putting together to see what trips are coming up. It was fantastic to see a few new trip leaders come forward for the Summer schedule, hopefully some more members will be inspired to try leading a Winter trip – can’t be too bad, it’s dark most of the time.

You can check out the alpine trip schedule on the website. This goes right through till the end of the year. Be sure to contact us early if you want to go on one of these trips as some of them involve organising your own flights to Christchurch. David Jewell has taken over
looking after alpine trips,

Snowcraft 2013 will run in July/Aug if there is sufficient interest. The dates for this and information about what is involved are up on the website and in the Clubrooms. It is great to have Marie Henderson and Tony Gazley returning to the instruction team after a few seasons of doing other stuff.

Now is also a good time to think about planning your skiing sessions, check out the information on Lodge bookings in this newsletter. If you are interested in helping out with lodge promotion we’d love to hear from you too. or

Our AGM is on Wednesday 10 April at 8pm at the Clubrooms. By now you should have received an electronic link to the Annual Report and the Financial Statement, these are also available on the website along with an agenda and the minutes from the EGM we held a few months ago. You should only read these documents if you have an interest in the health of the club or care about how we spend your subscriptions.

The list of nominations we have received for the 2013 Committee are:

  • President Sharron Came 
  • Vice President Amanda Wells 
  • Secretary Pete Gent / Megan Sety 
  • Treasurer Steve Austin 
  • Chief Guide Mike Phethean 
  • Assistant Chief Guide Debbie Buck 
  • Social Convenor Sue Walsh 
  • Newsletter Editor Sarah Young 
  • Membership Officer Helen Law 
  • Lodge Convenor Brian Goodwin 
  • Transport Officer Richard Lardner 
  • Promotions Officer David Heffernan 
  • General Committee Mike Gilbert, Craig McGregor, Donna Maher

Special thanks to Gareth Morton and Jenny Beaumont who are stepping down from the Committee after four years of service. They will be greatly missed. While it looks like we have a full committee there are a few of us who would be very happy to move on so if you are keen to take up a role it is not too late to put yourself forward. Also there is plenty of scope to help out without being on the committee. I hope to see you on Wednesday night. Generally the AGM can be relied upon to be both less painful and better value for money than a trip to the dentist. Bring a friend.

Congratulations to those whose photos picked up awards in the annual photo competition and best of luck for the FMC competition! Grant Newton, who was judging the photos, mentioned several times that the standard of photos was particularly high this year. This was due to Ian Harrison’s superb organisation of the event. Tony Gazley won quite a few categories including the People’s Choice award. For his sins Tony gets to produce the 2013 Journal. As the weather gets colder and the days shorter you may have more time to sit at your desk, eat chocolate, sort through your photos and write articles for the journal. Send your contributions to

While I’m on the subject of photos, if you want to share photos or messages on the WTMC Facebook page you can send material to our Facebook team at . This is a great way to promote WTMC.

Special thanks to Steve Kohler who, it transpires, is a dab hand with a sewing machine as well as excel spread sheets. He has made some new lime green bags for the poles and pegs that live in the gear cupboard. Finally, congratulations to Amelia and Mark White who as of April 2 are the proud parents of a baby boy.

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