Page 10 - Wish Stream Year of 2017

RMAS, we presumed that by now everyone could be trusted to pack the items on the kit list. Not so. It transpired that one anonymous member of the team had, in fact, forgotten to bring trousers. He had brought no trousers whatsoever. For a week of arduous mountaineering in changeable alpine spring weather. For the first few days, he
his remit, we made several speedy dashes down mountainsides when the first few flakes began to fall, so we wouldn’t get caught out in the snow. We even had to re-plan a whole day of walking when we nearly became stranded in an isolated mountain hut, because the forecasted rain did not fall as rain... it fell as snow. However, every cloud has a silver lining; the group was exposed to the valuable experience of adapting to weather conditions.
There were also a sprinkling of linguistic and cul- tural dramas throughout the expedition, includ- ing my mistranslation that there was a commu- nal kitchen at the hostel where we could cook our food. It turned out to be an actual restaurant, whose owner I had to persuade to let us cook our frozen pizzas in their ovens! The next issue was the fact that we had all become so swept up in the commissioning course that we all for- got our expedition ran over Easter weekend. The Austrians are big on Easter, so everything was closed. We realised this almost too late, and had to dash to Aldi to stock up on food to last us for the following few days like a bunch of panicked squirrels.
To conclude, I feel like the key lesson I took away from this expedition is to check everything, no matter how obvious you think it seems. Check everyone’s kit. Check out other routes in case of a sudden change. Check your translations and calendars. But above all, even though I never set out to lead an expedition hiking in the Austrian- Slovenian Alps, planning it was certainly a use- ful and memorable experience, and one that will stand me in good stead for organising future expeditions.
‘It’s good to trust, better to check!’
hiked in the flimsiest pair of shorts you’ve ever seen, until our instructor eventually took pity on him and lent him a spare pair.
It brought to new light that old CSgt adage: ‘It’s good to trust, better to check!’
The aim of the week was to acquire the basic skills we would require to be a competent group member in summer mountaineering conditions (in other words, below the snow line), and to each earn our Summer Mountaineering Foun- dation qualification. This ‘below the snow line’ rule was to cause us endless angst throughout the week. To avoid putting our instructor outside
Exercise CHARGERS CADET – Big Bear Lake
OCdt Newton
Following our time competing in the Sandhurst Cup at West Point, New York, half of the team flew over to the West Coast to conduct Adven- turous Training. Having coordinated our trip with another expedition, we opted to base ourselves
at Big Bear Lake, a small town in the San Berna- dino Mountains outside Los Angeles.
Following a day of travel and admin after our arduous week at West Point, we eased ourselves
8 SANDHURST