Taghia, Morocco

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

Just got back from an exciting cragging holiday in Taghia, Morocco. Great hospitality, perfect rock, magnificent scenery - what more could you ask for?
This shot shows MLT Board member Andy Boorman on the crux sequence of "Au Nom de la reforme" (6c). I've posted more photos on Flickr, click on this photo to see them.
A morning at home and then off to the Lake District to work on the British Mountain Guides summer training course. It's all go!

MIC Moderation visit at Glenmore Lodge

Following the MLT Board meeting at Glenmore Lodge it was a great opportunity to stay on for a Quality Assurance inspection of an Mountaineering Instructor Certificate course - we call these moderation visits. This involved a full day on the hill with the group as well as various briefing sessions as well as anb evening session about the role of the MIC and an introductory avalanche lecture delivered to residents and guests - an audience of about 70 people in all.

We had perfect conditions for the first day, an easy walk in to hard snowpack: ideal for looking at the finer coaching points of snow craft: kicking and cutting steps, self-belay, fall arrest and snow anchors.

Words of wisdom from George Mac

Sean Roberts gives a great demonstration of ice axe braking

NICAS seminar at Manchester Climbing Centre

We had an excellent turnout for the latest NICAS seminar - 41 active providers. Photos from the day at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46624718@N03/sets/72157625493023174/

NICAS seminar at Ratho

The move

Another visit to Ratho - what a fantastic place! It's certainly the most inspiring artificial climbing wall that I've ever visited. in fact its better than some real crags...  This trip was to update NICAS providers with developments in the coaching qualifications. I travelled up to Scotland with Dave Rudkin, who volunteered to do all the driving - as do most people when they've seen me at the wheel. Dave ran a session about coaching processes and ways to "front load" long-term teaching objectives right from the start. Other interesting sessions included a discussion about young climbers peer belaying , training a squad, acting as a technical adviser and integration with the education examinations requirements. An integrated pathway for young people seems to be emerging. My overall observation of the current state of play is that we have moved from a situation where climbers feared a takeover by "educationalists" to a new order where the education world has been won over by the climbers. You can quote me on that.

Ian Dunne and disciples

UK and Ireland-wide agreement over FUNdamentals workshops programme

This week the National Councils (British Mountaineering Council, Mountaineering Council of Scotland and Mountaineering Ireland) and MLT took a quantum leap forward in the develiopment of a coaching qualifications pathway: a formal agreement to work to a shared syllabus for LTPD in UK and Ireland. (LTPD = Long Term Participant Development in case you're wondering, also known as LTAD, the A standing for Athlete - there was much fun at the meeting trying to work out which members of the group were athletes and which were participants. The best known component of the LTPD/LTAD concept is FUNdamentals, coming to a wall near you soon!)

After the meeting Kevin Howett, the Development Officer for MCofS issued the following statement: "We are developing a coaching pathway in Scotland with the support and advice of sportscotland. The first step in this is a FUNdamentals of Climbing course, a syllabus for which we have been developing with their help. At the meeting of the National Source Group led by MLT on the 29th September we were pleased to gain agreement across Britain and Ireland to amalgamate our respective syllabuses, refining the successful workshops already delivered by BMC in England to produce a UK standard course. We hope to start delivering the new course in Scotland in the New Year, and use it to start the training and endorsement of an expanded number of Scottish climbing coaches, who will then help in developing and delivering the follow-on level courses of learning to Train and Elite Training."


In addition to agreeing to merge the draft syllabi, we also agreed on a principle of "team training" throughout the UK, as part of an ongoing move towards harmonisation and external valuation throughout the UK. This helps pave the way for these workshops to eventually be integrated into the coaching qualifications pathway that MLT is developing and implementing over the next two years. This means that canny coaches will be able to keep "a step ahead of the game" by following the LTPD workshops as they are introduced: LTPD is already being piloted under  the working title of "Learning to Train" (though "FUNdamentals II", or "conSOLIDation" may be a more suitable title for this interpretation of this phase for climbers)

Chief Officer working on UIAA/petzl Foundation project in India

My first update for a while, as there were no phone communications in Ley and very limited access to the internet. Ley was hit by a freak cloudburst in August which wiped out a segment of the town during the night, causing considerable devastation. However, as so often in India, the inhabitants have rallied round and business continues as usual for the survivors. Most of the city is unchanged; it is a beautiful place.

For the last 3 weeks I've been working in Ladakh with 2 colleagues from the UIAA Training Standards working group. We've run 2 courses back-to-back with the long term intention of producing a basic trek leader's course for local residents to work towards. This will eventually be managed by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, but the set-up logistics have been financed by the Petzl Foundation, a charity introduced by Paul Petzl to organise cultural and environmental projects in India.

The first course was delivered to a group of very keen young trek leaders working for a large private company called Rimo Expeditions. This was based in Ley in Ladakh, sometimes known as little Tibet. Indeed we were privileged to attend a ceremony presided over by the Dalai Lama, an unforgettable experience. The course was tiring but highly successful, including various short practical outings including a snow skills day at over 5,500 metres! The 2-day journey from Ley to Manali for our second course was bumpy but exciting, especially as the following day the road shut down for the long winter! Here in Manali, the second course was for mountaineering instructors from 3 national centres, with widely differing backgrounds. The course content and presentation was therefore very different, involving a lot of replanning "off the cuff". However, it was also successful, and now we are about to start packing for our return journey to Delhi, which is currently largely under-water by all accounts, so this may be quite eventful as well!

Open Season at Gogarth

In case it has escaped your notice, the summer bird ban for climbing on the Red Walls at Gogarth is over. The Red Walls are an acquired taste but for those who are smitten they provide real adventure in an other-worldy location. Pride of place goes to Mousetrap as a British sea cliff classic. The crux pitch is actually well protected where it matters, with a wire at your feet and cam by your waist as you stretch rightwards to reach a series of corrugated chimneys. The rock is weird and disconcerting, but basically the red walls consist of underlying "cheese" with  baked coatings of relatively hard sandstone. The problem comes in the areas where the coating is missing. The chimneys are one such area, but they are studded with fins and spikes of a largely quartzite nature. You can drape slings over spikes and place nuts and wires between flutings, but its hard to be sure whether this would hold a fall, so the whole experience is heart in mouth from beginning to end. Like all good horror movies there's someething particularly uplifting about topping out from these committing adventures.

Saturday 28th August was reasonably dry so Sion and I set off up Mousetrap then for some reason that I no longer understand we continued rightwards on the relatively obscure line of "Bedlam". This was descibed in the guidebook as bold, which it probably was before the pitons snapped. Now its better described as "character-building". The photo shows Sion aproaching the belay of Bedlam; you can see the easy slab of Mousetrap behind him. Next time I'm going up the slab.

UK's Mountaineering Associations meet at Glenmore Lodge

Representatives from the Mountain Leader Training Association, British Mountain Guides, Association of Mountaineering Instructors and British Association of International Mountain Leaders met at Glenmore Lodge on 2nd August to explore ways of working in collaboration and to provide Mountain Leader Training with information about the way that its qualifications are used by their members.

It is hoped that in the long term this collaboration may also bring benefits in articulating to the public a more unified message about the scope and remit of the UK's range of qualifications for leaders, instructors and guides of mountaineering activities.

 

THE ASSOCIATIONS COLLABORATION WORKING GROUP

 

 This new group, gathered as a working group of the main MLT (UK) board, and is made up of representatives from the:

 

 British Mountain Guides - Mark Diggins

• British Association of International Mountain Leaders – Issie Inglis
• Association of Mountaineering Instructors - Tony Halliwell
• Mountain Leader Training Association

 Through discussion it became immediately apparent that there are many ways in which this forum could enable all the Associations to work more closely together.

 

The group is chaired by Steve Long, Chief Officer with MLT and, during the first meeting, the following Role and Objectives of the group are being proposed:

Role of the Group

 

To support MLT by providing information which will:

•  enable better understanding of how Award holders are currently using their qualifications,
• how the Awards could interrelate more effectively
• how the Awards might be more easily understood

Objectives

 

To create: 

• Opportunities to share ideas
• Clear and unambiguous information about the awards and assoications to the public
• Mutually beneficial co-operation between Associations

Some Discussion Topics

 

 1.  To develop a full mutual understanding of all the current award processes

           a. Training and assessment

           b. How and where the Awards are used

2.   Professionalism, accountability and standards

3.   Effective ways of presenting the award structure to the public

4.   Ongoing development after gaining a qualification

5.   Collaborative communication and marketing

 

Coaching summit and reality

Another hectic week, starting with a couple of days in Cardiff at the sportscoach UK annual summit in Cardiff. With representation from many sports as well as representatives from all the home nation sports councils, this was a great opportunity to catch up with the mindset of the policy makers in the new political era. Thanks to Lottery funding, sports coaching is pretty safe financially, but there are potential areas of controversy that we need to be aware of. At MLT our primary aim for a coaching qualification pathway is to create a system that works for our sport/pastime. So if the UKCC model doesn't work for us, so be it. However all my research so far suggests that for at least levels 1 and 2 there is no reason why we shouldn't work within the UKCC model as long as our assessment methodology is acceptable to UKCC. If it looks like it will create mounds of pointless paperwork we'll step sideways but certainly at the moment there is no reason not to stick with it. On Thursday I presented a mapping of the Climbing Wall Award against UKCC Level 1 and level 2 criteria to our designated sportscoach UK rep, Dr. Gillian Mara. Jon Garside and myself were gratified to find that the CWA needs little other than some background understanding on team working and reflective practice/formal evaluation methods to fulfil the criteria for level 1 at least, so I will begin consulting over a proposed syllabus for this over the next few weeks.

I spent a long weekend in the Peak District with my son Sion Idwal and Chris Parkin's family for a coaching induction into gritstone climbing. This was an interesting challenge as we wanted them to sample some mid-grade classics as well as gain some leading experience in preparation for university life in Yorkshire if they get their "A" level grades. I think we pulled it off reasonably well, with various team switches enabling everybody to climb something at an appropriate grade throughout the trip. Routes climbed included Flying Buttress, Flying Buttress Direct, Hollybush Crack, Queersville, Leaning Buttress Direct, Tippler, Dangler, Goliath's Groove, Wall End Flake Crack, Right and Left Unconquerables at Stanage, Embankment Routes 1 and 4, Portland Street, Great North Road, Lyon's Corner House, Knightsbridge and the Mall at Millstone, and Tody's Wall plus Valkyrie at Froggat.

Lecture tour of Japan

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

Right now I'm engaged in a series of meetings and lectures as the guest of the JWAF. I've lectured in Tokyo, Sapporo and Osaka about the work of Mountain Leader Training and also the work of the UIAA Training Standards Working Group. The meetings have included an advisory consultancy meeting today with the Osaka branch of JWAF as well as the Search and Rescue Committee. I've also been interviewed by TV and met the presidents of various Asian federations and the Nepalese Ambassador as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations. The Japanese are very interested in learning from the lessons learned in standardising qualifications across the UK and are investigating the possibility of working towards UIAA accredition, though these are early days, with a politically complex background.


We managed to slip in a day's hill walking in Japan's Northern Alps and I had a brief play this afternoon on the ex-competition wall at Kobe University, Osaka. After the lectures I stayed on for a few days and joined the JWAF's General Secretary Mr Takashi and translator Ms Owada for some climbing at Mitsutoge, a stunning location with Mount Fuji as a backdrop.

You can see a report from the lecture at Sapporo at: http://hkdrenmei.exblog.jp/i14/

You can see my other photos on Flickr.