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Early August 2025: Private Two-Day Navigation Course

Sam was looking to upskill before heading to Canada next month for a ten-day 750km adventure racing world champs event, so booked a private 2-day course with Rob near Arthurs Pass, based at the Canterbury Mountaineering Club’s Kennedy Lodge.

This turned out to be a really enjoyable and physical weekend: mostly off-track with 19km/1100m on Saturday; 22km /1200m on Sunday (with a 4am start). Plenty of pauses to discuss navigation theory and tactics, and enjoy hot lunches and coffee. And we got to see some Whio/Blue Ducks!

Sam provided this feedback about the weekend:

“I learned very much out in the field, carrying out the task where you can see real life examples of the lesson at hand. Rob was great at grasping opportunities as they arose to capture valuable navigation lessons and tactics.

“Pre-trip and post-trip comms and processes were great: prompt, easy, generous, what more to say. Great gear selection with gear well researched and field tested by Rob.”

“Very good value for money – pricing is very competitive. Rob’s a great guy, extremely generous with a patient teaching style.“

July 2025: Two Alpine Skills Courses at Temple Basin

We had the privilege of Hawea-based IFMGA guide Petrouchka Steiner-Grierson (aka ‘Pet’) instruct this season’s Women’s Alpine Skills Course at Temple Basin. Four stoic women – Nicole, Kat, Ann, and Alice – put up with three days of pretty poor weather, but were still smiling by the look of it! Pet reports that they still managed to cover a good range of skills despite the wind and rain. Nice one team!

Two weeks later, it was Rob’s turn to instruct another three-day Alpine Skills Course, this time with fantastic weather. Steffan, Graham, and Gemma all had some alpine experience already, so this course ended up being a good refresher, with lots of mileage with and without crampons and a lovely camp under the stars.

Late May 2025: Two-Day Navigation Course

Paul, Louis, Dillon, Anna, and Matt joined Rob and Bia for this late autumn Navigation Course, based once again on the reliable Bealey Spur near Arthurs Pass.

The weather really put it on for us, with a beautifully crisp evening for night time navigation practice. The rain even held off until we were almost back at the cars.

Five more people are now armed with the tools to determine where they are on the map, choose a good route, estimate how long it will take, and understand how the features they see in front of them relate to the map.

“But what about the compass?” you ask… Yes, an easily repeatable method for taking sightings and following bearings is practiced a lot on this course. But most of us find that once we’re out there, the terrain usually tells us all we need to know, without having to resort to the compass. You just have to know what you’re looking at!

Thanks Louis for photo #1, Paul for photos #2-4, and Bia for the rest!

We were chuffed to get this feedback from various members of the group after the course:

“The course met all expectations – which is rare. Both instructors were excellent. Tents were amazing. Very good value for money. Loved the course and hope to do more with Mountain Journeys.”

“I thought the pre-trip communications were very well-organised! On these types of courses I think the instructor (before learning anything) sets the energy of the trip and I think Rob and Bia did that very well. The additional tips about gear and outdoor knowledge really added value to the course. I had a great time!”

“Both instructors were incredibly experienced but humble people, which created a positive and supportive learning culture. We really valued the experience.”

“Everyone was friendly and knowledgeable. It was a great experience and I’ll be back for more!”

May 2025: Second attempt on Dun Fiunary from Whale Stream

Phil and Chatty were keen for another trip with Mountain Journeys after enjoying their Alpine Skills Course last year, and decided to try a climb of Dun Fiunary from the Mt Cook Highway with our Chief Guide, Rob. Chatty and Rob had tried this back February, but an incredibly hot approach on day 1 had left Chatty feeling less than energised for a summit attempt on day 2. That trip ended with a nice little climb of Pt 2043m near camp, but Chatty was keen for another trip for a proper attempt on the main objective…

Dun Fiunary is a fairly staunch 2500m, yet it’s reasonably straightforward from a technical perspective (in good conditions) and has several good camping options on the approach, allowing for lots of flexibility. Our trip was 1-2 weeks after the big weather system that flooded much of Christchurch and the Selwyn River (and Chatty’s farm in Dunsandel); that same system also deposited a lot of snow in the mountains. We crossed our fingers that there’d been enough time for the snow to have either melted (lower down) or consolidated (higher up) to allow us both a nice campsite and good climbing conditions…

The approach to Dun Fiunary starts by crossing Ferintosh Station in lower Whale Stream. If you want to plan a trip here, first ask owner Marion Seymour (03 435 0512) to check that your proposed times won’t overlap with hunters or biodiversity monitoring work that sometimes happens there. (There’s technically a marginal strip along the banks of Whale Stream, but it’s not a viable route being covered in dense scrub, and it’s courteous anyway to liaise with Marion since you’re essentially crossing her farm.)

A comfortable day’s hike got us to a pleasant campsite next to the south branch of the stream at 1500m. En route we also got some great views of the impressive Ferintosh Peak at the head of the north branch.

We began an hour before sunrise and made good progress through interesting snowgrass and boulder basins. The route itself keeps slowly winding its way around to the right side of the mountain so you can never really see what’s coming up except for the next few hundred metres. We stopped at 2040m to add our windproof trousers – it was cold and blowing! – and again at 2240m to put on crampons and have a good snack break. Despite being 250m below the summit the views were already magnificent.

Eventually we reached a point 60m below the summit from where we’d either have to cross a big snowfield or scramble up some rocks on the ridge crest. Rob went to investigate the ridge and found it to be too steep, then carefully prodded the start of the snow and found it to be thigh-deep muck. So, despite frustrations at having “Not Done Fiunary” again, it was clear this was to be our high point.

The ever-increasing winds didn’t stop us from having another comfortable night at camp in our robust Hilleberg tents, before weather eventually boosted us back down the valley to our vehicles. We were ultimately satisfied with the way we structured the trip, and Chatty and Phil were both very happy with the extra practice they got in alpine conditions. You can expect to see more from them on this page in the future!

Late April 2025: Family Journey to Canyon Creek and ‘Shamrock Ridge’

For the last weekend of the school holidays, Rob had the privilege of creating a three-day South Island tramp for a Wellington mum and her 13 year old daughter. They’d just had a lovely tramp to Welcome Flat hot pools in great weather, but during our trip some wet weather was set to arrive from the west. It was time to cancel our plans for the Brewster Glacier and think of something else…

Rob already knew about the cool bivvy rock in upper Canyon Creek, accessed from the Ahuriri, which is far enough east of the Main Divide to escape such a weather system. The map revealed an interesting but achievable loop back along the ridge to the east of the creek, which would allow one night camped on the tops. This ridge doesn’t appear to have a name, but we’ve referred to it as “Shamrock Ridge” as it’s above Shamrock Hut.

Travel along the ridge was super scenic, with a few slightly tricky but manageable sections of bouldery travel and scrambling. (Rob was stoked to see Pt 2118m to the east, between the Watson and Maitland valleys, which was his first South Island summit back in January 2001, age 18 – see the second photo of this post.)

We even found a great campsite tucked into the edge of the bush to shelter from the growing nor’wester. An untracked but open bush descent led us back to the car in time to reach Omarama for lunch.

Easter 2025: 4-day Navigation Course

Arthurs Pass again proved its versatility, providing suitable venues for this course despite a forecast for some very heavy rain. A couple of people changing their plans last minute meant that Flora and Nadeine were the sole participants!

The course began on Friday morning with no time to lose, covering theory and skills at the NZ Alpine Club lodge before heading out in the afternoon for an overnight trip (which we had to complete before Saturday afternoon’s rain got too heavy). This time of year works so well for navigation courses, as our two hours of navigation in the dark on Friday night still didn’t keep us up too late.

Even after a big day of knowledge input on Friday, these two performed really well on Saturday and found what was possibly the best route down through the untracked bush we use for these courses that Rob’s ever used! The Bealey Hotel was a lovely haven as the heavy rain began late afternoon.

Sunday saw us mostly inside, but with a couple of short excursions to the lower Deception and upper Bealey rivers for some heavy rain navigation practice.

Conditions on Monday were perfect for some tops navigation challenges, with thick cloud in the Craigieburns making Flora and Nadeine work hard to identify which high point was which. All-in-all a great four days, after which Flora put her skills to immediate use with solo untracked trips near Arthurs Pass and Fox Glacier!

April 2025: Personal day trip – Aicken-Blimit-Cassidy (Arthurs Pass)

A nice opportunity for some lightweight scrambling on the tops with Rob’s good friend Scott Sutherland. A windy day made us briefly consider that we may need to turn back if it got any worse on the exposed sections – fortunately it didn’t!

Here are Rob’s comments that he wrote on the Canterbury Mountaineering Club Facebook page:

A little under 9 hours away from the car, moving reasonably well with a few breaks out of the wind.
The current guidebook description seems overkill to me. The cruxes are numerous and are encountered getting in and out of the main notches on the ridge crest. Look around for a better route if it looks too tricky, there’s nothing that bad. If Tiptoe Ridge at Arapiles is a benchmark grade 5 then the cruxes here are mostly grade 3, max 4. Not grade 12-14 as the guidebook suggests! We need to get better at grading the easier stuff in NZ, and Arapiles is a great reference. The Yosemite Decimal System is also useful for less technical terrain. This trip would be Class 4 scrambling.
The guidebook is correct that most of the tricky stuff can be avoided by dropping into the scree basin of the upper Punchbowl, but that kind of misses the whole point of the trip.

Early April 2025: 2-day Navigation Course

This time Rob had a nice small group of three: Brony, Emi, and as luck would have it, a photographer, Michael. The weather was still not too cold so to save weight (and enjoy some fresh air together) we slept under a huge tarp instead of using tents.

After some late nighttime navigating in the beech forest on Saturday night, it was nice to lie in bed on Sunday morning going over some navigation theory and plotting routes on the map before the day’s off-track journey down to the Waimakariri valley.

Thanks for the photos Michael!