Welcome to the underbelly of virginsummits.org.
You're no doubt wondering why we've got this sort of stuff on a mountaineering website. Well, the thing is, people are always asking us what we do for food in the hills and do we eat meat and where do we get it and how do we kill it etc. etc.
So here's the whole unpleasant story.

1. Select a fine animal from a friendly local herder. This one cost around US$30 (although the goat was slightly more) and was very nice when curried. Posing for photographs with dinner-to-be is obviously optional and depends how sick you are.

2. Cast about the countryside until you chance upon a tame Kiwi and rudely press him into service as slaughter man. (It makes for a more efficient kill if you can pursued him to put down at least one of his two "cigarettes"). If you don't have a convenient Kiwi to hand, an Australian will do, but under no circumstances should you use an Englishman as we are all girls at this sort of thing and only understand meat in little plastic packages in the supermarket.

3. Find a sharp knife (seen here after the slaughter obviously). This is extremely important and may take some time. NB. Those funny Swiss army knives with 1001 blades unfortunately do not have one designed for slitting throats - you have been warned.

4. Catch the goat. Again this may take some time. If you have to chase it, you should not perform the slaughter whilst it is still excited, as adrenaline is said to make the meat tough.

5. Don ceremonial costumes, roll up your trousers and perform the satanic blood letting ritual of your choice. NB. Whilst the ceremony is an important aspect of the slaughter process, Voodoo style chanting should be discouraged as it upsets both the neighbours and the goat (see adrenaline note above).

6. Now it's time for the nasty business of killing the poor thing. Approach from the rear, wrestle it to the floor (familiar ground so far) then pull back the head. The kill is made by performing 3 very quick incisions that are progressively deeper, the last of which severs the spinal column, which nearly always results in death. The whole process should take less than 7 seconds if performed by a trained practitioner or 7 minutes if performed by your average Joe.
Spectators should stand well back, as blood from the main artery can fly several feet and makes quite a mess of your trousers.

7. Repair to the nearest tree and hang the goat on your improvised frame (cleverly fashioned from a snow picket in this case) and start the butchery process. This takes some time and is a very skilled job. Your humble correspondent cannot begin to explain it, but basically you take a dead goat, give it to a Kiwi and 20 minutes later you've got something you can make kebabs out of.

8. Bag it up, hand it over to your fine expedition cook and look forward to the Kiwi smelling of goat for the remainder of the climbing season (which is slightly better than him smelling like a Kiwi I guess).

This page is dedicated to our Pakistani cook Zahoor who served us this particular goat for every meal for four days, including breakfast, which consisted of cornflakes, fried eggs, chapattis, jam and curried goat. Scrumarooo.

Whilst this section is obviously light hearted, the Virgin Summits team take animal welfare very seriously on all expeditions. We employ the services of an unsightly, but highly trained Kiwi farmer because he is able to make a very quick and humane kill, ensuring the animal suffers the minimum distress.

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