Observation days with Jagged Globe

I've been out the last couple of days observing on a Jagged Globe 'Winter Mountaineering' course to pick up some tips on teaching winter skills and general guiding in the Scottish winter environment.  We spent the first day up on Aonach Mor refreshing the groups basic winter skills and looking at the snow pack before heading up into Stob Coire nan Lochan today to put these into use with the students safely leading themselves up Broad Gully.  Its great to be able to get out with very good and experienced instructors to see how they make the most of every situation throughout the day to get teaching point across and demonstrating them.

 

 teaching in full on Scottish conditions

Condition wise there had been quite a bit of fresh snow high up over the last 24 hours and the buttresses in Stob Coire nan Lochan were looking a bit whiter with lots of snow on ledges but the steeper lines are still a bit bare.  

Stob Coire nan Lochan today

New blog and Scotland bound

Welcome to my new blog, it’s still a bit of a ‘work in progress’ quiet like my writing! But I’m hoping to keep it updated as regularly as possible with general climbing bits, trip reports, my progression through the British Guides training scheme and reviews of the gear I’m using.  I've also copied all my posts from the Mountain Equipment blog that I've been contributing to over the last year or so.

I’m up in Scotland now for the next couple of months for the Scottish winter part of my British guides training, 5 days of training at the end of this month and then a 6 day assessment at the end of February. With lots of prep to do for this and hopefully some personal climbing too I should be out on the hill most days so I’ll try and get some useful condition info up on a fairly regular basis.  I’m really psyched to be up here as it’s a whole new play ground for me and the first winter I’ve spent in the UK for a lot of years. So with lots of classics to go at and hopefully a few visits to the more wilder venues over the next few months I’m just hoping the conditions will return as it’s safe to say there is a massive thaw going on at the moment...

We wandered up Carn Mor Dearg on Thursday and then into Creag Meagaidh on Friday to potter about on the plateau just to try and get to know the area. In the end we didn’t even make it up to the Window as the motivation to struggle on in horizontal rain and very strong wind wasn’t there! If the ice survives the thaw though it should come really good as the main drainage lines were still looking fat.

 Creag Meagaidh today