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?