The William Pike Challenge
William Pike loves to explore and hike around nature. He also created the William Pike Challenge. Would you join the challenge and step out of your comfort-zone?
The first time William took his friend James up to Mt Ruapehu they hiked to the dome shelter. At 8:20pm the door of the shelter blew open and Willam slid on his knees to the door. When William looked outside, he saw mud, water and rocks flying down the mountain, Mt Ruapehu was erupting. After that his legs were crushed by rocks and mud. His friend James said he was going to run down the mountain and get help. Willam said, “Will you tell my friends and families I love them?” But James said, “Nah mate, you’re going to tell them yourself.” So William stayed in the Dome Shelter waiting. He did some maths on how long it would take the rescuers to get to him. He thought it would take them 10 hours and he did some more maths and he thought he was going to die in 5 hours.
The damage to William Pike’s leg was too severe so they amputated just above the knee. Doctors said that William would have to learn how to walk with a prosthetic leg. Willam Pike was scared that he wouldn’t be able to do all the things he loved to do, so William said, “No, I will give myself 3 goals that I will have to complete
The first goal was to learn how to walk again with the new prosthetic leg, Williams next goal was to teach again and his third goal was to make it back to the Dome Shelter. After he did all of his goals and more he created the William Pike Challenge.
The William Pike Challenge runs from year 6 to year 9 there are three activities you have to do: passion project, community service and then outdoor activity. My school Karoro does the William Pike Challenge. You do this in year 8 or year 7. For outdoor activities we do bike rides, ski trip, tramp, beach cookout, mountain climb and an overnight tramp.
Passion Project is about something you want to do that is new to you like with me I did sowing. I learned how to use a sewing machine. You can choose any thing that you want that you have done. For my passion project my dad and I went walking. We are still walking. We still need to do two more then we have completed my passion project.
Community Service To complete community service you need to give back to your community to do this you would, bake stuff, make stuff, raise money, talk or read to people in rest homes or help at the SPCA you will need 20 hours of this to complete the activity.
Outdoor Project The Outdoor Project are activities that are outdoors. This project gets kids to step out of their comfort zone and head off into the bush exciting stuff. This is what our year 8 class did for outdoor activity bushwalking, mountain biking, rock climbing, white water rafting and skiing.
Caius: The very first walk we did was 20K. I found it very hard to walk because the longest walk I had done previously was only 16K but I never gave up and I finished the walk.
Caleb: I stepped out of my comfort zone with white water rafting. I found that it was hard to paddle using the paddles but I pushed through and conquered rafting for the first time.
You should join the William Pike Challenge, because the William Pike challenge has inspired lots of kiwi kids to step out of their comfort zones and do amazing stuff, like this kid named kaydon who built a bird house and sold it for 18000 GRAND and gave it to a charity . So just try something new you don’t know what you can do.
-Caleb And Caius