British Mountain Guides Summer Training course part 2.

Bruce Poll short-roping
Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

This week I'm helping on the British Mountain Guides Summer Course 2. As a member of the Training Committee I thought it would give a useful oversight of the summer section of the scheme if I worked on both elements of the summer training course. It was interesting to compare the two courses; one based at a club hut in the Lakes and convened by an independent Guide (Adrian Nelhems) the other based at the National Mountain Centre and convened by its Director of Training (Martin Chester). I feel that the two coursed complement each other very well, with the fortnight in between providing a good consolidation opportunity. It's a real privilege to be able to work on courses like these and I am excited that MLT has agreed to free up my work schedule to stay current and also ensure a level of consistency between the various UK (and worldwide!) training schemes.
Tomorrow we have some keen young mountaineers for the coach candidates to coach, so there should be plenty of ideas and enthusiasm on show. Unfortunately there will also be vast amounts of rain water pouring down our sleeves, but you can't have everything!

Ogwen valley under snow

Approaching Llyn Idwal

When we get proper winter conditions in Wales its such a luxury to potter about in the morning before wandering out to climb. So after a few last minute Christmas preparations my son Sion and I were able to drive over to Ogwen Cottage to see what the ice is looking like. A lot collapsed about a week ago but lately we've been getting dumps of snow on a fairly regular basis, with cold clear days in between. Yesterday I was committed to a coach qualification planning meeting with my colleague Jon Garside so was unable to take advantage of the clear skies, so today was our first chance in a while to get out.

Parking the car took a while as available spaces were full of snow - however some enthusistic shovelling carved out a safe niche and we were on our way. There's about half a metre of snow on either side of the path, a narrow beaten trail snaking up to Cwm Idwal. The llyn is well frozen under a mantle of a few cms of snow, although there were a couple of pools of water at the shore in a couple of places. Poor Sion hasn't been exercising much at University so he found the brisk pace hard work but we up against a tight deadline now with about four hours of daylight.



Sion in Devil's Kitchen

 Below the Idwal slabs we met Tim Neill and Nick Bullock who had been pipped to the post by a couple of teams also bound for the Devil's Appendix, which is very well-formed this year, certainly "fatter" than I've ever seem the first pitch before. Surprisingly the ice elsewhere is a bit leaner, though certainly starting to build. We bumped into Tim Jepson and his daughter who were descending from an ascent of the Screen and all scrambled up the cleft of the Devil's Kitchen to see if the ice on the back wall has formed. It hasn't. Well, if you are hungry for it I guess its possible but the ice is steep and fragile at the moment. So we beat a strategic retreat, and found the Screen now cleared of climbers so were able to race up this in the fading light.