Big thanks to everyone who came along to our trip planning night on 24 July, it was great to see some new faces as well as the usual suspects whom we count on to come up with great ideas for the trip schedule. It would be fantastic if the rest of you could take a look at the draft schedule and see if you can lead a trip or two. You don’t have to have done a leadership course to lead a club trip and we are happy to provide advice and support if you want to try out trip leadership for the first time. Most members are capable of leading a day trip so please consider it. The draft trip schedule is on the website in the forum or email
Last month I talked a bit about the importance of only signing up for a trip if you actually intend to go on it. Sometimes we get queries about how to contact trip leaders without coming to the clubrooms. This is relatively easy if you are a club member, just go onto the website and utilise the search function. Provided you know the name of the trip leader for the trip you want to go on you will be able to access their contact details and contact them direct. Having trouble driving our search engine? Our webmaster is happy to provide guidance . Signing up for alpine trips is even easier, just check the schedule on the website and email queries to .
We are very open to ideas for making our trip processes easier for both trip leaders and other trip participants, provided this can be achieved without compromising safety or undermining our trip policies and the community spirit of the club. If you have any ideas, and the time to help implement them please contact the Chief Guide or Assistant Chief Guide. Likewise, if you happen to be reading through our policies, (on the website) and note stuff that is clearly out of date or seems a bit stupid we’d love to hear about it. One of the strengths of our club is that we have coherent and comprehensive systems in place for running lots of great trips – we want to keep it that way, this means being open to making changes if appropriate.
I’m pleased that loads of you have been getting out on trips and coming to the club nights to experience the great entertainment organised by Sue. It is also good to see people taking the initiative to send pictures from trips to the facebook team and to post interesting stuff on our forum and the FB page. This is a great way to generate interest in what we do. Tony our journal editor is on the hunt for trip reports and pictures for the 2013 Journal, don’t forget to send your contributions to – the sooner the better. If you want to know what is coming up on the Wednesday nights you can go onto the website and check out the google document that lists what is coming up. This is worth a look as we have secured some excellent speakers for the coming weeks.
The Lodge is getting good patronage at the moment and I was particularly heartened to meet a member in the Bulls Kebab shop on Friday night who was taking a group from his work up to the Lodge. This is how we get better patronage of the Lodge by you guys telling your friends and colleagues about the Lodge and how to book it. There is a good snow base at Whakapapa at the moment so skiing, boarding and climbing are not only possible but enjoyable. Andrew is doing a brilliant job organising the food for the Lodge as he does every year and Eric and Brian have been very busy in their roles as Lodge Booking Officer and Lodge Convenor respectively. If you have an interest in helping out with Lodge related stuff, for example marketing the lodge or acting as a Lodge leader or driving people to the Lodge, get in touch with Brian .
As usual we have a few jobs that we’d like to find people to help out with. If you attend the Wednesday nights fairly regularly you may be able to help out on the door and/or with banking the night’s collection of $2s. If so please let David , Sue or myself know .
Look forward to seeing you on a Wednesday night or out in the hills.