As part of the club’s efforts to develop new and emerging trip leaders, the club ran an Intermediate Bushcraft Course over the weekend of 31 Jan – 2 Feb 2025. We were extremely grateful for the financial support offered in the form of a Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) training grant.
Dominic and Dave from the Wellington section of Outdoor Training New Zealand (OTNZ) facilitated the course for the club, which proved to be an excellent learning weekend for our group.
The aim was to consolidate and further develop foundational bushcraft skills including:
- navigation with and without compass,
- travelling off track in bush terrain,
- selecting campsites,
- emergency first aid,
- emergency fire and river safety
- practical aspects of small group leadership whilst on a tramp.
We hoped the course would also complement the ‘leading your first WTMC trip’ workshops run by the club – which are more focused on the theoretical aspects of trip planning, administration, and decision making during a trip.
We kicked things off on Friday night with some navigation theory and then headed into the bush on Saturday and Sunday.
The group practised using features to support navigation, different methods of walking on a bearing, regularly checking a map to keep track of where you are, and communication.
Course participants took turns at leading the group. At various intervals, the instructors also threw in scenarios that might routinely occur on a tramp (eg. a person dropping off the back of the group, injuries, when to use a PLB, a team member who wanted to go a different way to the leader etc). Each leader dealt with the situation and then we had a group debrief and discussion about the particular scenario and leadership considerations.
Over dinner at our campsite on Saturday, we practised emergency fire lighting techniques and our instructors advised us about tramping nutrition and how to deal with group members who may not have brought the right food.
On Sunday we covered river safety. We had a lesson on techniques for crossing as a group or as an individual, and learned how to identify good spots to cross a river. This was followed by several practices of group and solo river crossings.
We were all impressed with the facilitation of the course and the depth of knowledge demonstrated by our experienced OTNZ instructors.
The scenarios were not pass/fail assessments and were designed to be learning opportunities for everyone. The discussion that followed each scenario highlighted that course participants already had significant leadership skills, and this knowledge was able to be shared with the group.
The WTMC are especially grateful to the FMC for enabling club members to attend this course, through the provision of a training grant. Keep an eye out for the full trip report in the July edition of FMC’s Backcountry magazine .