Andrew’s Adventures

Ball Pass Crossing

Andrew Finnigan was a student on AIC in 2004 (Garth London was his instructor). Since doing AIC, Andrew has gone on to complete some amazing climbs and is now working towards training as a guide in Mt Cook, spending this summer guiding Ball Pass. Here is a snippet from Andrew’s adventures since completing AIC:

‘This is pretty steep…If this is grade 1, I can’t imagine a grade 3! I thought mountains had snow on them, not this stuff. Why are we walking in a big dangerous, expensive circle in a whiteout? I wonder if I will ever manage to climb a 3000m mountain?’

A sample of my thoughts as I tentatively weaved through the classic Taranaki sastrugi during AIC 2004. I was working for the Wellington City Council; my first year out of university, a civil engineering degree behind me.

Something had driven me to take a childhood of tramping to the next level and onto the white stuff. At the time I had no idea where it was going to lead.

Well now, in 2007 it has changed everything. A half-hearted engineering career is now history and the mountains are both my work and play. After AIC, Manu Ward, Shane Harrison and I (all 2004 AIC-ers) visited one of the volcanoes whenever the weather allowed. A climb of Tapu-ae-nuku was our first South Island trip and attempts on Earnslaw and Sealy took us to the bigger mountains. The lure of the hills was too strong and I moved to Timaru racking up loads of moderate ascents over that year.

Despite the massive scope for climbing in NZ I was tempted by the Himalayas and took part in an Adventure Consultants, 3 peaks expedition to Nepal. The trip was fantastic but a little tame and on return I decided it was time to get out in NZ’s big mountains. I took the summer off and climbed Mts Aspiring, Cook, Dixon, Hooker and Madeline.

I was beginning to wonder if I should make a living out of climbing and a position with Franz Josef Glacier Guides provided a perfect entry level position in the guiding world. The job was alright but the weekends were amazing. Being right there and well looked after by The Heli Line saw me in the Neves a couple of times a month. Climbs of the Moonshine Buttress on Conway, Jungle Drums on Spencer, Tigger on Barnicote, and the left couloir of Douglas showed me I was capable of technical climbing.

At this point the bank account was again flush and I found 4 others for a trip to Peru. We spent 2 months climbing with ascents of 8 peaks between 5500m-6800m including the quite rightly world famous Alpamayo.

I am guiding Ball Pass this summer and plan to begin the NZMGA guides assessments the summer after this.

There are loads of great things about AIC but two jump to mind. Its location and the contacts. A professional TMC in the Southern alps can never match AIC as a place to find climbing buddies. Aussies fill most of those expensive courses and will never be the regular weekend warriors that AIC is full of. The location is also perfect. The larger more dangerous mountains are a long way away! This might seem like a bad thing but weekends spent on the North Island volcanoes are the beginning of an often overlooked climbing apprenticeship. AIC is awesome, get into it, crawl all over those volcanoes, plan some trips south and then there are no limits.

Let me know if you’re down south and need someone on the other end of the rope.

Huge thanks to everyone past and present who has put time into AIC.