Strengthening Connection | Enabling Change | Developing Hope
How shall we celebrate Mastering Mountains’ 10th birthday?
From the beginning, Mastering Mountains has been about community. However, our small size made it challenging to develop a community and connect people during those early years. Ten years later, we have an incredible bunch of grant recipients and the beginning of a connected community of people with MS or FND who love to get outdoors.
Next year, to celebrate Mastering Mountains' 10th birthday, we would love to bring all the grant recipients together in person for an inclusive adventure.
Below, you'll find some ideas on what this could look like. Then, we'd love for you to provide input through the survey at the bottom of the page.
To celebrate our 10th birthday, we'd like to suggest two concepts that would bring all the grant recipients together in adventure. Our goal is to get the trip(s) subsidised as much as possible, to reduce the financial cost. Depending on your feedback, we could engage in either of the two concepts or both (a third option) at different times of the year.
Concept One: A Retreat
Goal: The retreat would focus on strengthening connections by adventuring together and learning opportunities that enables change through greater insight.
In practice, this could look like adventuring together during the day, with lots of space for building relationships and connections. In the evening, we would sit down with an expert facilitating learning about a topic relevant to our group (similar to our Zoom seminars, but in person). During our adventures, we would also have the opportunity to reflect, further cementing what we have learned. We would design the activities to be as inclusive as possible for whoever participates, with various options that enable people to challenge themselves without overdoing it. We aim to have this subsidised as much as possible.
Sample itinerary:
Day one: we travel from Christchurch to Mount Cook Village or nearby to Glentanner Park.
Day two: we hike the Hooker Valley track together.
Day three and four: people break off into smaller groups around different activities (for example, cycling the first section of the Alps to Ocean track with e-bikes, rock climbing at Sebastopol Bluffs, kayaking Tasman Glacier Lake, tramping up to Sealey Tarns or Meuller Hut).
Day five: time of reflection together and travel back to Christchurch.
Concept Two: Haerenga
Goal: The haerenga (journey) aims to bring us together on an exciting, multi-disciple expedition that allows people to join any part of the journey. The trip would include multiple points at which people can enter or exit the journey (i.e. you can do as little or as much as you would like), although we would aim to spend as many evenings together as possible for the duration of the trip.
This expedition together would be guided and designed to match the capacity of those who wish to participate. This concept would have less of a focus on facilitated learning and more of an emphasis on challenging ourselves together. Like the trip you completed with your Mastering Mountains grant, a haerenga would provide a stretching goal to train for. We aim to have this subsidised as much as possible.
It’s also important to note that this journey could provide an excellent fundraising platform. Next year, we will need to raise a bit of money to continue operating, and a trip like this would be an excellent mechanism for getting people onboard in support of individual participants. Challenging ourselves with an adventure to enable the next generation of grant recipients could add an extra layer of meaning to the journey.
Sample itineraries:
Coast to Coast
Day one: cycle from the West Coast from Kumara Junction to Jacksons via Lake Brunner on e-bikes; night at Jacksons Alpine Holiday Park
Days two & three: hike over Goat Pass with night at Goat Pass Hut
Day four: raft the Waimakariri River Gorge with camp at Kowhai Pass campground
Day five: cycle along country roads to Christchurch.
Ruapehu to Taupō
Day one: travel from Taupō to Whakapapa.
Day two: climb from Whakapapa Skifield to Tukino Lodge via Ruapehu summit
Days three & four: tramp to Desert Road via Waihohonu Hut
Day five: raft Tongariro River to Turangi
Day six: cycle the first section of Timber Trail and stay night at Timber Trail Lodge
Day seven: cycle the second section of Timber Trail and travel back to Taupō