Boat For Expedition

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31768, 27 August 1968, Page 18

Boat For Expedition

The Department of Civil Aviation has given a written-off inflatable boat to a group of mountaineers for use on an expedition to Chile. Mr R. Vickers, a Canterbury engineering student who is one of the group, tested the air-sea rescue boat in the Estuary yesterday and decided it was most satisfactory. He said it would be used to cross lakes in the foothills below the 12,000 ft Mount San Valentin, which the party of seven hopes to climb. All are members of the Tararua Tramping Club, Wellington, and they are making the expedition to mark the j club’s fiftieth anniversary next year. They will leave by sea for Punta Arenas early in October, 1969. Mr Vickers, who was a member of the New Zealand party in Antarctica in the 1966-67, plans to take his wife on the expedition to Chile. The party will spend 14 weeks there and hopes to climb a number of little-known peaks, several of which are about 10,000 ft Mr Vickers said the terrain was very similar to that of Canterbury, with plains rising to the foothills of the Andes. Mount San Valentin rises from an icy plateau, so the climbers also plan to take snow-shoes, skis and sledges.

Mr Vickers (right) is shown in the boat with Mr R. L. Miller.