Club night at Indefatigable climbing wall

At long last, a Friday evening free! I poked my head in again at the Anglesey Adventure club which my son Sion used to frequent. As always it was great to see so many keen young climbers bouldering, top-roping and leading. All the discussions about when to let young people learn to lead and to belay lead climbers that occupied much of the NICAS seminar gained a fresh relevence when you see how seriously even the youngest climbers take their belay duties. In fact, much more attention to the job in hand than the average adult surrounded by beautiful people....

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

Climbing at Red Rocks, las Vegas

MLT officer Steve Long and Board member Andy Boorman have been sampling the delights of Red Rocks, the magnificent desert wilderness bizarrely located only 3 miles from las Vegas. Along with 2 other Climbers Club members they have completed dozens of routes including the celebrated Rock Warrior, Risky Business and Cloud Tower (UK equivalent grades of E3, E3 and E5 respectively).

Steve returns to the office on 17th October.



Andy Boorman on Risky Business (5.10c)





 Steve on the crux of  Cloud Tower (5.11d)



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!

Autumn photos

Here is a slideshow of Steve's best photos from the autumn of 2010. Watch this space - autumn has only just begun!




http://www.flickr.com/photos/46624718@N03/sets/72157624759836675/show/

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.