SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

The highlight or culmination of the ML training is a couple of days out with a wild camp thrown in. We were a bit lucky with the weather, we departed from Beddgelert by which time it had stopped raining a little and by the time we arrived at camp, by way of various navigation excercises, the sun was showing a little. After preparing some food and chatting a little we set out as it got dark for some micro-navigation in the dark and again the weather held up.

By the next morning though heavy rain had set in and breaking camp was a little damp. From there we headed onto an enjoyable crossing of a ridge line in some windy weather but not too much rain, just as we were a few minutes out from the road head it started to rain heavily again though. The road head was actually Rhydd DDu where my old climbing club, the Oread MC, have a hut which was a nice trip down memory lane.

All in all, a great course and a chance to meet some great people with some interesting backgrounds. The two main instructors, Lee and Kenny, were just fantastic and the facilities at Plas y Brenin are really excellent. Between the instructors and the centre I think they’re setting a standard that would hard to better.


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Another day on the Mountain Leader training course at Plas y Brenin, the objective today was to try some ropework in the context of the Mountain Leader role. This is a bit odd for climbers and mountaineers though, you’re always inclined to use more kit like a few slings or carabiners and not having a harness feels wrong. The context for Mountain Leader though is basically just using a rope. The trainers suggest using 9mm or greater for this, personally I either use a real rope (Mammut Serenity 8.9mm super dry) or a Beal randonnée which is only 8mm. The Beal is certainly more difficult to handle but at 37g/m it’s a great weight to carry, the Serenity is a full on climbing rope and rated for single rope alpine use and at 52g/m is a reasonable weight to carry.

Anyway, we had a good day in some reasonable weather and learnt a few things. I’ve read how to do a “south African” abseil but never tried it and it works just great, it’s certainly more effective than the classic abseil I’d default to. On the other hand, they make a lot of use of overhand knots which I don’t think will displace 25 years of bowlines and figure of eight knots for me!


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