International recognition for N.Z. mountain guides

Press, 17 November 1981, Page 21

International recognition for N.Z. mountain guides

A decision made in Europe on November 8 was “the most significant event that has occurred in the history of New Zealand guiding” according to Mike Mahoney, the past president of the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association. The International Union of Mountain Guides Associations (U.1.A.G.M.)-decided on that date to admit the New Zealand association to its membership. The New Zealand association is only the second — following Canada’s — from outside Europe to be admitted to the international union.

The decision puts a seal of international approval on the New Zealand association’s continuing efforts to provide for the proper training and certification of mountain guides in this country.

Guides have been numbered among the great names of New Zealand mountaineering. Few amateur climbers earned reputations to match those of Peter Graham, Vic Williams, Harry Ayres, and Mick Bowie. But none of these notable guides were ever certified or licensed to practise as guides. In their days, the profession was small enough and sufficiently centred on the Mount Cook alpine regions that their reputations provided members of the public seeking their services with

all the assurance they needed that they were competent mountain men.

Some efforts were made in the 1920 s and 19305, led by A. P. Harper, to establish a proper licensing system for mountain guides in New Zealand, but the need then for a system of certification to safeguard the public was not strong enough for these proposals to get beyond the talking stage.

In the last decade or two, however, guiding has spread away from Mount Cook into other mountain regions, on both the North and South Islands, and also broadened in scope from being a matter of mainly guiding individual clients up high or difficult peaks to embrace as well instruction courses, ski and cross-country touring, and group trips into remote mountain areas.

One result of this expansion of the profession — in numbers of guides and into areas away from the traditional guiding centres at the Hermitage and the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers — was the formation, in 1974, of. the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association. Its aims: promoting professional standards, establishing standards of competence for guiding, and setting up a system to “certify” that guides were properly qualified.

The association held its first training course in 1976.

These have continued for the past five years and there are now seven guides fully qualified under the association’s training and certification scheme and another 20 or so well on their way towards being fully certified. Under the association’s scheme, aspiring guides must complete two summer courses of 15 days each, one winter course of 14 days, and an additional avalanche course of seven days. These courses cover all climbing techniques, route finding, weather forecasting, river crossing, and rescue techniques — everything a guide needs, to know to conduct an inexperienced party safely through < often-dangerous mountain country. A candidate for qualification as a mountain and ski guide must meet all the requirements for a mountain guide and also demonstrate competence in ski-ing and ski-instructing. After successfully completing the first training course, a guide in training becomes a probationary guide, and must then spend' 20 weeks actually guiding or instructing, under the supervision of a fully qualified guide. After completing this probationary time and passing all the training courses, the candidate becomes eligible towear the badge of a fully qualified guide.

The establishment of such

a training programme is what paved the way for the recent admission of the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association into the international union. An adequate training scheme is one of the major requirements the international union makes of national associations seeking affiliation to it. Details of the New Zealand association’s scheme were sent to the international union some time ago. An observer from the international body. Mr Horst F a n k -

hauser, president of the Austrian Guides Association, attended a course held at Mount Cook in December, -1980, on the invitation of the New Zealand association.

Mr Fankhauser reported back to the committee of the international union,, which decided, in June 1981, that it would recommend to the annual general meeting of the union that the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association should be admitted.

There remain some points of disagreement between the New Zealand body and the international union. One point which caused considerable discussion is that the New Zealand body is training women guides — one is almost fully qualified and others are part way through the training programme. Some member countries of the international union do not yet train women guides.

The New Zealand association does not intend, at this point, to seek government regulation of guiding, although the international body has suggested that it should. The effect of such regulation would be that guides who lack certification from the Mountain Guides Association would not be allowed to act as guides in New Zealand.

The association is reluctant to seek such regulation, at least in the meantime, because it would be put in the position of policing people who are already acting as guides or instructors who are competent to do so but who have not, for one sound reason or another, become involved with the Mountain Guides Association or gone through the association’s training programme. The association hopes that

as members of the public become aware that certification is a guarantee of competence, clients seeking guides will gradually come to expect their guides to have this mark of qualification. The situation in New Zealand requires, the association feels, a policy of promotion rather than one of policing.

Much of the work of securing international recognition for New Zealand guides has fallen on the. shoulders of Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, secretary of the New Zealand association. A climber of 20 years standing, Gottlieb qualified in his native Germany as a mountain and ski guide and ski instructor before coming to New Zealand in the mid-19705. Since then he has directed four training courses. A secondary school teacher in Christchurch, Gottlieb looks on guiding as his “second profession” — he pursues it at present at week-ends and in the school holidays.

By

JOHN WILSON