Month: April 2019

The RCDI course is the award for teaching the skills for trad and sport climbing and leading in a single pitch environment. We’re super proud to be one of the 4 providers in Wales for it! Whilst the venue remit of the award will be the same as the RCI, it will fill a gap between that and the MCI. The fact you need to be a committed hillwalker, mountaineer and ML holder for the MCI has in the past put many people off from moving up the awards ladder. With these barriers removed for this award, we’re going to see loads of amazing climbers and coaches moving to the next step, and I love being involved with that process!

What is the Rock Climbing Development Instructor scheme?

The lead climbing element is only a part of the RCDI course, and ultimately the pinnacle of what you might get up to. You could be teaching people to go and set up their own outdoor climbs and abseils, coaching them in skills and techniques to further their personal climbing, develop their indoor or sport climbing and help them with the head game of lead climbing. It’s going to be packed full of coaching tips, profiling skills, warm ups and games to develop climbers, background knowledge of climbing and the environment, and obviously all the ropework and decision making and managing lead climbers… The full syllabus and more details can be found in the excellent handbook if you look at the RCDI page on the Mountain Training website here:

Rock Climbing Development Instructor course information

The pre-requisites for registering are fairly significant, but they need to be as you’ll need a huge depth of personal knowledge and instructing experience to be able to fully cope in the environment yourself, look after your clients whilst they’re leading, and make sound judgements in the decision making process.

What do I need to do to sign up for the RCDI?

60 VS Trad leads, 60 6a or above Sport Climbs and 20 days teaching as an RCI – so get filing in your D-Log! Once you’re happy it’s all there you need to register and apply, your log book needs to get signed off by one of Mountain Trainings Technical Officers. Once you’re accepted, the same as the other qualifications, there is a training course, a consolidation process and then the assessment.

What I would say is that the MCI has had a VERY low pass rate, and we don’t want to see this award being the same – we want people to pass! The pre-requisites are a minimum, get loads more varied experience, get heaps of personal climbing in and work in different areas on different crags, trying to work on more than just intro taster days. Consider the BMC Fundas courses and the Coaching Awards, this will all help you become a better Instructor (and probably a better climber too!)

Where can I do the RCDI course?

We’ll be running our courses on the wonderful crags of the Gower and Pembrokeshire and possibly visit local climbing walls. We often have better weather than other areas of the UK and will visit great array of venues in stunning locations. I pride my courses on being relaxed, friendly, fun and adaptable, getting the best out of you – even the assessments! Course dates are up on the Candidate Management System but we can always put other ones on so get in touch if the dates don’t quite suit! Check out our dates here: The Climbing Company RCDI Courses…

Why do the RCDI course with The Climbing Company?

I’m a full member of the Association of Mountaineering Instructors, and a WMCI, which means you’re learning from a committed professional with a huge passion for climbing and coaching, and a climbing CV spanning 6 Continents, from Alpine North Faces in Winter, Big Wall Climbing in Yosemite, leading groups up big Himalayan Peaks and every other form of climbing in-between!

Post winter hasn’t included much of a break this year, which is great but it was straight back at it with courses when I got back from Scotland! Tying my journey back south with an update level 5 First Aid course based on far from help medical emergency situations was great, and as always super interesting with Dr John Dallimore. So much better and more worthwhile than the standard outdoor first aid courses, many of which aren’t really that relevant or useful for our work guiding expeditions to remote places.

Rock Climbing Instructor courses

Our first RCI training of the year was blessed with good weather, with Porpoises at St Davids Head setting the backdrop for day 1, the Haverfordwest Climbing Wall on day 2 and finally the perma-sunny Newton Head.. A fantastic and knowledgeable group of candidates that really added to the training process.

The weather has been good for some personal climbing, with numerous sessions at the North Pembrokeshire staples of Barcud, Caerfai and Porth Clais, and a few visits to the South Pembs Limestone in the Penally and St Govans area. As always, plenty of visits to Plumstone for some bouldering as it’s only a couple of minutes from home.. I’ve also popped to the Gower for a bit of trad but more so the sport climbing there. When I first moved to Pembrokeshire the sport climbing on the Gower was fairly minimal, but now there’s so many ace routes to go at – well worth a visit! Loving the longer nights again!

Rock Climbing Development Instructor Courses

It was super exciting to be approved as one of the new (and only 4 in Wales) providers of the new Rock Climbing Development Instructor Scheme… This highly anticipated award is aimed at teaching lead climbing on single pitch crags, and will fill a gap for many great climbing Instructors that don’t want to do their Mountain Leader award and progress through the Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor scheme… I cant wait to get delivering these exciting courses – have a look if you’re interested and get involved!

Continual Professional Development

Early season is a great chance to get some CPD in, and as well as being super interesting, a great way of showing your currency and professionalism as an Instructor. Having done loads of CPD in Scotland over the Winter it was great to get out with local Pembrokeshire Geology experts and learn about the home crags! Followed by a sunny evening personal climb at Caerfai watching a pod of Dolphins enjoying playing in the bay – it doesn’t get much better!

I was in North Wales after that, and as great as Pembrokeshire is, its always nice to be in the hills! I was working on a Mountain Leader training course for Wet and High Adventures – the poor candidates had it pretty cold! Thankfully the weather swiftly changed and the Rock Climbing Instructor assessment I was directing for Dave at Acwaterra was bathed in glorious sunshine! Really nice candidates all round as ever!

Mountain Leader Courses

Then a stint back home working in the climbing wall running all sorts of sessions from beginners taster classes, intro to climbing courses, learn to lead climb and a bit of coaching for the Haverfordwest youth climbing team. It was back up to Snowdonia after that and a Mountain Leader assessment for Wet and High Adventures, a spectacular week and a glorious exped with warm sunny days and beautiful wild camps!

Easter arrived and the weather was booming! Some more personal climbing and plenty of days private guiding left me a little frazzled from all the sunshine, so some more climbing wall work was pretty welcome!

The rest of Spring will fly by and we’ll soon be in to summer – where does the time go?!

It’s taken me an age to write a report for the winter just gone and what we got up to. To say it was a funny old one would be an understatement! I had booked my MIC assessment for the end of the winter, and had lined everything up around that… For anyone that was up there, the fact that winter was often actually summer can’t have gone unnoticed, and conditions were far from ideal for training toward my last Mountain Training qualification…!

As it transpired, my assessment course was cancelled a few days before it was due to start. This was pretty much expected by this point, but pretty gutting none the less! This qualification was essentially what I’ve been building up to for a number of years both professionally and personally, making certain choices in life to fit around it..

Post winter the name of the award has in fact changed, so I’ll never actually be an MIC now anyway! I however look forward to my Winter Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor award assessment in the winter of 2020! Currently the WMCI will be exactly the same, though a review of it is due to start this autumn. With a super busy summer ahead, I thought I’d better wipe the winter slate clean and get a little blog up of what we got up to, move on and look forward to things to come! The rest of 2019 looks pretty exciting for a number of reasons!

“Winters” beginnings…

Figuring I’d go up in early January and get some good winter hill days in to get these seaside legs working again, I was greeted with early season conditions in the Cairngorms – fantastic for some hilly training runs, but meant I had to look pretty hard for the white stuff for our early season winter skills clients!

CPD and Training

I had booked onto several trainee workshops, aiming to check I was on the right lines with what I was doing and to give my training some good direction and get feedback as to my progression. The AMI agm workshops ranged from short roping to winter weather. I spent a couple of days at the CIC hut on Ben Nevis learning all about the mountain from Rich Bentley. A day out with the SAIS forecasters in the Lochaber region was as always super interesting and useful. Far too many winter outdoor professionals just don’t up-skill their avalanche awareness enough. This should be as mandatory as your first aid quals – if not even more important. A final couple of days with Al Halewood looking at all aspect of guiding and teaching with multiple rope options was great, and after all this cpd throughout the season I was feeling pretty happy with it all!

Winter Skills Courses and Guiding

I’d purposely not booked in too much Winter Skills work or guided mountain days in order to direct my preparation towards assessment – but ooooh how the bank balance is suffering now! I couldn’t refuse my return clients, or the odd day working for friends, and we did actually have some fantastic conditions. Some great hills, fun days, great knowledge passed on, and new faces already booked onto other stuff throughout the summer with me.

Mock Clients

I spent a fair bit of the winter getting out with “mock clients” ie- non paying guineapigs! We had some ace days actually, and made the most of conditions and with the lean winter, climbed routes I hadn’t done before as well as old favourites often in different conditions to the norm. This was really valuable learning for me, seeing real life how different decisions work out in different variable conditions.

Personal Winter Climbing

One of my main aims for the winter was to do as much personal winter climbing as possible! Hampered by conditions coming and going, or being totally absent, I still managed to get a fair bit done – but winter 2018 it was not! I went out on so many days when I normally wouldn’t have bothered, soloing potential client routes, or climbing soggy routes, or lean routes, or esoteric routes – all in all pretty tiring but fun none the less! I think I climbed about 40ft of ice all season, much of it was spent on snowed up rock, or frozen turf/mud… Still, by seizing every opportunity (and boy didn’t the legs know about it!) I got quite a lot of routes in!

Scottish Winter that was actually Summer!

Then came the bonus stuff! Long snow free runs up Munros, rock routes on The Ben, plenty of visits to the Ice Factor, bolted dry tooling routes outside.. But the absolute mega highlights of my winter:

Traverse of An Teallach – stunning weather and views, moving fast over perfect rock, this has to be my new favourite mountain day in the UK, and ranks amongst my best days anywhere in the world!

Ardverikie Wall – I’ve had a copy of classic rock since I started climbing, and have ticked a lot of them, but this route is possibly the best I’ve done at the grade in the UK. Beautiful location, amazing rock, every pitch long and pretty exposed for the grade – simply awesome! And warm! In winter!

Looking forward to Winter 2020…

Physically and psychologically tiring, lots of driving for the “good” conditions, BUT some amazing fun times with a great group of people as always – and they make the winter don’t they?! Cheers for the good times y’all! Here’s hoping winter 2020 will be a colder snowier one, maybe see you there?

Winter Skills Courses