Knot session for NMA trek leaders

Knot session for NMA trek leaders
Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

Watching the young tutors planning, delivering and reviewing their teaching sessions was a truly heart warming and rewarding experience. Here Binot, a keen young tutor works alongside Pasa, a Scout Leader from the nearby International Scout camp teach Nisha, a TV producer to tie a figure of 8 knot. By the end of the course Nisha and the other 5 students showed great development in hill walking skills, and Nisha was looking forward to enrolling onto an NMA basic mountaineering course.

Some of the ex-students are now planning climbing trips: at least two of them have their eyes set on Everest but some of the others are now preparing together for a climbing trip to the Langtang Himalaya. They will be setting off in a few days - I'm sure they'll have a great adventure together!

Loads more great photos from this course at Flickr: just click the photo to find the link

Nepal Mountaineering Association Trek leaders

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Patrick Manier and Vignayek with students

MLTUK's Steve Long worked alongside Patrick Magnier (seen in this photo) on an experimental but succsessful course where former trainees from the NMA/Petzl Foundation trek leaders' training scheme were trained as tutors to work under the supervision of qualified Nepalese instructors. Working with us were two Nepalese Guides: Lakpa Sherpa and Jyamchang Bhote. The experiemental bit was using real students for the trainee tutors to work with. The end result for both tutors, students and instructors was startlingly successful.


Sunrise at NMA's training centre at Kakani

This final installment in the long-running project by the Petzl Foundation handed over the administration of the scheme to NMA with the intention that once it is fully established, NMA will apply to the UIAA for accreditaion. 
Working with minimal resources and intermittent power cuts, this was a challenging but immensely rewarding project. The UIAA Mountaineering Commission also hopes that the longstanding Slovenian supported Basic Mountaineering scheme in Nepal will also be nominated for Training Standard accreditation. More photos and some film footage can be found at the Flickr hosting site by following the photo link.

A similar project is still ongoing in Ladakh; this will be another international training team project, possibly including an instructor from Nepal.

The graduates

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Man, Vinayek and Mingmar, by SteveMLT

Man, Vinayek and Mingmar, 3 of the students on last week's course. This week they are helping 2 Nepalese Guide/Instructors and 2 IFMGA Guides to deliver a similar trekking skills course to fellow compatriats. The course is fairly similar in content to the Accompanateurs (EML) course before the full winter component was added.

Some of the students are atteding the course as a primer for the NMA Basic Mountaineering Course (which has a long waiting list), some want to go together to climb Island Peak, a few work as trekking guides (with some impressive peaks to their names, and may years' experience!). Currently we have 6 new students from a similarly eclectic background including an actress/director. Perfect weather again this morning, but no water or electricity today so I'll sign off before my laptop's batteries go flat - today is the last and only internet access we'll get for the week.

Moscow UIAA meetings

The Mountaineering Commission meeting in Moscow (11-13th November 2010) was highly successful. From the MLT point of view the main event was the formation of high-powered working parties to produce a business plan and articulate operating procedures for a strategic expansion of the international Training Standards. For more details see the report on the UIAA website:  http://www.theuiaa.org/news_276_To-bolt-or-not-to-bolt-discussed-at-Mountaineering-Commission-meeting

Representatives from the former USSR meet to discuss mutual cooperation

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!

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.