Moderate level of fitness
Navigation
Have you ever found yourself accidentally off-track in the forest or thick mist? Or you know a thing or two about navigation, but want to become more confident or efficient with your route-finding? Our navigation courses can help you improve your route-finding no matter what level you’re currently at. Keep Reading
We’ve taught navigation courses to total beginners, Godzone adventure racers, SAS candidates, transalpine trampers, hunters, even reality TV participants! They all appreciate our simple, easily-repeatable techniques, our patient teaching style, and the ability to put the skills into practice on real overland trips during our courses.
On our introductory navigation courses, we help you translate what the map means so you can learn how it relates to the landscape around you. We also introduce a few ways that a compass can help you, using a very simple method (no more remembering “do I add or subtract?”). We’ll also go over some tips and tricks around route planning to make navigating your proposed trip even simpler.
Many navigation courses try to cram everything into a single day. Well, that’s long enough to learn the basics, but most people end up confused because they haven’t had enough time to put it all into practice. On our overnight courses, we’ll practice navigating in the dark, then on the second day we’ll do a proper off-track journey with you all taking turns to navigate extended sections.
If all of the above sounds easy to you, then we can help you up your game on a longer trip. Learn what makes Mountain Journeys the best in the business at backcountry navigation. Drop us a line and let us know where you’re at and what you’d like to learn.
Snow Skills
Our Snow Skills courses can be run either for groups who are completely new to travelling in the snow, or for people who want to brush up on their skills. Keep Reading
The courses can be tailored to suit the individuals who attend, depending on what specific areas you’d like to concentrate on.
How our alpine courses are different:
• We provide all alpine equipment so you won’t need to hire it
• We provide high quality dinners and breakfasts
• Our aim is to give you plenty of time on your feet – the more practice the better!
• We aim to spend a night camped in the snow in our 4-season tents, giving you a proper alpine experience.
Transalpine Skills
For those of you who want everything that’s on offer, this is where you can find it. We’ll undertake an actual multi-day journey in the Southern Alps so that you can put the skills into practice in a real setting. Keep Reading
This is a great course for a group of friends wanting to do more trips together. River crossing, campsite selection, off-track navigation, and most importantly route selection, are all covered.
Each of our Transalpine Skills Courses are different – they’re heavily influenced by the experience levels and future ambitions of you and your fellow participants – but in general there are some key differences between our spring and autumn courses.
The spring course is six days long, and includes substantial amount of time learning snow skills. The spring course is intended for those with very little previous off-track experience.
The autumn course is five days long and is often completely free of snow. However, it has a much stronger focus on route selection and advanced navigation, and requires a higher level of competency at moving over uneven ground.
We did a Navigation course with Rob Frost at Mountain Journeys and it was excellent. We wanted to improve our navigation knowledge and confidence when out in the mountains. Happy to say we left the course achieving this and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We’re looking forward getting out there and testing our skills. Rob’s cooking and food choices were also excellent!
-Richard Harries
What exactly are transalpine trips, and what skills do you need to undertake them? Trans means across or through, so transalpine can be defined as across an alpine area. If you are to go across an alpine area, then you need to be able to get to it and from it, through subalpine and forested areas. In New Zealand, these areas usually involve little to no guidance in the way of marked routes, and there are many unbridged rivers and streams to cross.
So, undertaking a transalpine trip requires skills that relate to crossing rivers, navigating across untracked terrain, and travelling on snow. Things like knowing what gear and food to bring, understanding the weather, deciding where and how to camp, and what to do when things go wrong, must also be factored in.
Our courses are designed to give you the skills to undertake transalpine trips confidently on your own.
We’re currently taking registrations of interest for all courses – click here to register to let us know you’re interested in future courses. All courses are usually based out of Christchurch. All courses can be based out of Wanaka on request. All courses include accommodation costs and overnight meals; free transport from the trip meeting point to the track start is also available depending on numbers.
