UIAA Mountaineering Commission meeting in Santiago

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

One of the highlights of the autumn of 2012 was the UIAA Mountaineering Commission meeting in Santiago, followed by a Training Standards seminar and a moderation visit to the FEACH rock instructor assessment course. Great hosts, great weather, great scenery. What's not to like? You can read the seminar report here.

Ski touring in Austria

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

This is the lovely area to the south of the Zwolferhorn summit near Salzburg. I was lucky enough to run some staff training events in perfect winter conditions. It was so good that I decided to start blogging again! We spent a day doing avalanche hazard evalution and then a couple of days on site-specific accreditation for some very experienced staff with excellent skiing skills.

Ogwen Valley during an MIA course

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

I helped out on an MIA course earlier this week; a great opportunity to meet candidates and also work alongside some old friends. Later in the week I also delivered an AMI Trainees workshop. I do feel that its important for the technical staff to stay current with the qualifications; it certainly makes it easier for me to justify my position within Quality Assurance.

This year has been unbelievably busy for me, which is why I haven't been updating the blog regularly. I will probably just cancel my efforts to run one for Mountain Training and just maintain a personal blog in the future. Its so easy to output pictures from Flickr into this blog, so as this is not regarded as a useful part of the MT social networking policy I will just continue to use it for myself. Not sure if anybody reads it anyway!

Paddling at Holme Pierrepoint

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

The BCU kindly invited me to observe a pilot coach tutor training course at their headquarters in Holme Pierrepoint. It was a long overdue first visit to the whitewater course for me, though I was not tempted to get into a boat and sample it at closer quarters. The course gave a really useful insight into the priorities for coach training identified by the BCU, one of our closest cousins in the adventure sports qualifications world.

Eraserhead, Gogarth

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

This has been an excellent week for climbing as long as you picked sun or shade according to the temperature. Pete Johnson and I headed over to Gogarth on Wednesday 29th May with the Main Cliff as our objective, with low tide at 11.00. We arrived to find low water but our intended route, Dinosaur was still in the shade and looking decidedly damp. So we decided to tackle Eraserhead, a route that I previously climbed about 15 years ago. At that time it had been graded at E6 so it had seemed like a big challenge at the time. Nowadys the consensus is that E5 is a more fitting grade, albeit "distinctly uphill" throughout. And so it proved; we enjoyed a fantastic climb bathed in sunshine and reached the top in time to attend the BMC Cymru area meeting kindly hosted by the RSPB cafe at South Stack.

British Mountain Guides open day

SteveMLT's photostream on Flickr.

This year's open day was attended by 6 prospective future Guides. I joined them for the afternoon's cragging (after a morning of tree felleing at home!) The weather was decidedly suspect so we drove over to Wales's "rain shadow" where sure enough the rock was dry and almost warm! My partner Rich and I swung leads on the classic E1, "Last Slip" a Joe Brown classic that was previously a real "sandbag" at HVS.

Mr Softy Wen Zawn

Mr Softy Wen Zawn
Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

A panoramic shot giving a hint of the spectacular position of this modern classic "rock" climb - the clue is in the name! I've been wanting to climb this adventurous route since watching a team climb it during the BMC International Climbing Meet several years ago. Yet another amazing day out at Gogarth, interspersed between days in the office and dodgy showers inland. This particular route was the most enjoyable outing, though earlier battles included "Barbarossa" (E6+) and The Cruise (E5).