Bridge building was possibly the best and most enjoyable activity I have done so far at the Alpine School.

When we first thought about it, it didn’t seem like it was going to be to challenging, boy were we wrong. At the start of day we were shown a couple of different ways to tie down the rope and how to build tripods. These tripods were what we would use to make our way across the slow running river. We began construction after a brief planning session and by snack time we had two well made tripods. After snack we brainstormed ways to get the tripods into the river and into the right position. As a group we thought of a few different ways to get them into the water but our final decision was to stand the tripods on their side on the bank and lower them down into the water using ropes. Unfortunately for us we had to stop and get off the road because a whole lot of cattle came through for a morning walk. After our minor disturbance we soon found out that this method wasn’t the greatest way of doing it but it got the job done. By lunch time we had both tripods in the water and close enough to where we wanted them. During lunch we realised that just two tripods weren’t going to be enough to reach the other side so we built another one followed by a couple of well made planks to get out to the tripods. Getting the third tripod into position was a lot easier than we thought. Our plan this time was to tie a rope to the tripod then throw that rope to people out on the other tripods and finally just push is into the water. This was really effective because the people out in the middle of the river were able to just pull the tripod into place. Once we had our final tripod and planks in place we had to get the final plank onto the other bank so we could walk across. Let me tell you trying to balance on twenty centimetres of log whilst moving a five or six kilogram log into place is a lot harder than you think. Eventually we got it just right and were able to wobble ourselves across to the other side. Our whole team made it across without so much as a hiccup. After we had taken photos and all that stuff we had to untie all the ropes and pack everything up. Due to our hard work the pack up was the quickest thing we did all day.

By Joshua