A week at camp with 10B

By Flynn MacGill-Brown and Nirbighna Acharya | Posted: Thursday March 10, 2022

10B returned from camp at Mt Aspiring last week.

10B Camp 2022: Overnight stay.

The overnight stay was a truly amazing experience and definitely my favourite activity. I found it to be the best bonding experience.

The first part of the overnight was actually having to get there. It felt like a much easier walk compared to walking up to the Rob Roy glacier, but it was still around 8 or 9 km. The walk there was a very nice part of it, with a long stretching river, towering mountains and perfect weather, you couldn't ask for a more beautiful place to walk around. Finally we arrived at a field covered with tall grass, right next to the clear blue glittering water.

After taking an hour to set up tents and unload sleeping bags everyone collected stones and wood for our campfires. Many people went for a swim in the river, and even though it felt absolutely freezing, it still felt like something you had to do while being right there next to it. After the quick dip everyone got their fires fully up and burning. 

Soon after everyone prepared their food to cook, it was definitely a challenge. In the end, our group's cooker just didn’t have enough strength to boil water, so we just used the campfire and that worked better. Even after a few mistakes while cooking, we actually managed to make a pretty decent pasta and sauce accompanied with a couple of slices of bread. It made for a decent risotto.

After dinner everyone messed around until it got dark. Eventually everyone ended up around our group's campfire. The seniors cracked open some marshmallows and told some “spooky” stories. I decided to try and sleep. Surprisingly I managed to get a solid nights sleep even though the ground felt rock hard all night. 

I woke up around the time I usually do and decided to just get up and grab some wood for the fires because there was not much else to do. Eventually, everyone started dragging themselves out of their tents and prepared to make whatever they could for breakfast. Our breakfast was very nice with campfire cooked toast, pancakes and a variety of other things mixed with porridge. 

The day before had been the big exciting day for everyone, so the start of today still felt like a bit of a recovery from that. After I had had another quick swim, we all began cleaning and packing our mess away. After an hour or so of packing, we gathered our belongings under a tree and crossed a few rivers to get to a waterfall and creek.  We managed to get a great view of another glacier that was sitting just behind some other mountains. Just before lunch we headed off and began the beautiful but longer journey back to camp, this time with a full head of memories, experiences and good times.

Flynn

10B Camp 2022: The Other days 

Excited, excited, and excited. Three words that are enough to describe how we all felt about the 6-day long camp. Sunday, the first day of camp, everyone was in high spirits as we all boarded the bus. During the 4.5-hour bus ride, we stuck like glue to our device. It was the last time we were going to be able to do this until Friday. Of course, everyone wanted to make the most of it. 

We stopped at Roxburgh for a mere 10-minute toilet break. The weather was cloudy and it looked like it just might rain. The bus stopped again in Wanaka where we were allowed 20 minutes to get our lunch. The final point where the bus could take us was roughly another hour away from Wanaka. 

When the bus dropped us off, we got the trailer sorted for transporting the food and equipment and started on a walk to the lodge itself. Depending on the pace, it took the class anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach it. 

At the lodge, we got everything ready, a group went and got the water sorted, another group helped organise the kitchen and the rest got their cabins sorted. After we finished the jobs, we had a little bit of free time where we all did various things around the lodge. Some were playing cards/games, others were chilling in their cabins, a group was playing table tennis, and the final group was helping get the dinner ready. After we had dinner and dessert, we finished our nightly rituals (brushing teeth etc.), fell onto our thin mattresses, and snored. It had been a big day, but the next was going to be bigger.

Monday. Day 2. Every cabin was woken up at around 7:30am and was told that breakfast was ready. After a breakfast of toast and perfectly porridgy porridge, we got our stuff ready for the tramp/hike up a mountain and left for the van. We were transported to the mountain in 3 groups, each group about 20 minutes in front of the other. The tramp/hike was annoying but great fun. At the top, we had lunch sitting on a big rock. Once we came back down, we went to a pool under a small waterfall and had a swim there. After the swim in the afternoon sun, we all travelled back to the lodge. A group made a new bridge at the creek, while the rest made pikelets/pancakes in preparation for the overnight. After, we had dinner. Once dinner was done, the seniors presented us with some questions to which we wrote answers in a book in our cabin groups. We finished the first half of the quiz and left the second half for another day. Another round of nightly rituals was completed, and we all slept.

Thursday. Day 5. We woke up, had breakfast, got our wetsuits, and went kayaking. It was going to be a great day. The weather was nice, and everyone was in the mood for kayaking. We took the van down the gravelly road for about fifteen minutes until we came to the start. We were briefed on how to use the paddles, got into the kayaks, and started paddling away towards a rapid. Correction, four rapids, all of which were extremely fun.

Friday. Day 6. We all woke up a little earlier than usual, had breakfast, and started to tidy up the lodge. We packed our things, cleaned our cabins and the lodge, and overall prepared to leave. Once everything was finished, we walked to the bus. From there we stopped at Alexandra for a 30-minute lunch break. Then it was a direct ride to school and home.

Overall, the camp was fun and a great experience. It is definitely something you don’t want to miss out on. Thank you to all of the teachers and the seniors who made this camp trip possible. 

Nirbighna

Thank you very much to the senior students who helped make this such a successful camp: Aaron Nelson, George Hamilton, Oscar Kirkness, Hugh Davidson and Ronan Melville. A big thank you to Dr Fisher, Camp Leader, fellow staff Mr Alderton, Mr Foster, Ms Moore and Mr Roe. 

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