Becoming Men

Heli ⋅ Hike ⋅ Camp ⋅ Bush Survival Skills

We have teamed up with The Great Glenorchy Alpine Basecamp, an hour from Queenstown, New Zealand’s best kept secret.  The Basecamp is the gateway to the Unesco South West New Zealand World Heritage Area. 

Your father son adventure is about celebrating that all important time when a dad spends a brief and special time with his coming of age son to welcome him into manhood. 

You and your son will learn crafts and skills that will develop a core sense of self reliance (independance) and confidence …. No shops, takeaways or internet ….

Using your hands, limited tools and your mind … You will problem solve together … deep in the remote and magical UNESCO South West New Zealand World Heritage Area…with epic encouragement and instruction.

The Becoming Men program will include adventure planning, packing, preparing, setting up camp, health maintenance, personal hygiene, foraging, cooking, shelter building, lost drills, navigation, river crossing, the art of improvisation, and various specific technical skills within each of these modules. 

ITINERARY

Day One

Arrive at The Great Glenorchy Alpine Base Camp. Meet the team, your guides, the other members of your group, and enjoy a briefing session with gear check. After settling in at Base Camp, there will be an evening activity to set the scene for the trip, and a sit down meal together to fuel up.

Day Two

Early start for breakfast and packing, you will need the energy! Off to the airfield in our 4×4 Defenders to catch your helicopter transfer through The UNESCO South West New Zealand World Heritage Area to a true wilderness location.

First Things First:

• Health and safety
• Hazard briefing
• Knife safety
• Wilderness environment
• Shelter and Fire

Understand the goals and techniques of shelter building, led by your guides. Create goals and reverse engineer to achieve them. (Best to have a small waterproof notebook)

• Make an upside down fire using the principles of fire-lighting in a wet environment.
• Identifying and collecting suitable wood
• Safe knife use
• Processing firewood
• How to keep kindling dry
• Ignition methods
• Dinner

Day Three

• Fire stocked to get your breakfast prepared.
• Water on the boil

• Cooked breakfast
• Morning activity – Trapping Methods
• Prepare traditional eeling resources (Eeling is best after dark)
• Lunch (Dough is prepared and set aside to rise)
• Check in with goals
• Shelter and fire for the night
• Steak and veg kebabs, self-saucing chocolate pud.
• Discussion on survival principles and effect on brain function
• Debrief on the day
• Eeling

Day Four 

An epic day. The sons have the reigns. Leave camp and head into the wilderness armed with the key principles of bushcraft. A day to put into practice everything learned so far.

• Sons prepare a list of goals and a timeline
• Dads and guides pitch in as directed
• Emphasis on task completion and refining skills
• Lots of laughs and fun expected!
• Smoked eel for lunch, dried fruit, crackers and cheese
• Dinner, everyone pitches in.

Day Five 

Coming back together as a group for breakfast and breaking camp. A pack down and into the arriving helicopter for the flight back to Base Camp. The showers will be hot, the sauna will be on and the fires burning.

 

Itinerary is weather dependent and may change.

Queenstown airport transfers available if required.

Pricing includes: All accommodation, first night dinner at Base Camp, All food in the field, helicopter flights, 4X4 transfers, all technical equipment.

The team at The Great Glenorchy Alpine Basecamp are more than happy to customise an adventure especially for you. All they need is for you to get in touch.  Drop me a line using the form below and we can get the ball rolling.