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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I’m in Wales at a Mountain leader training session at Plas y Brenin the national mountain centre. So far we’ve had some wild weather which suits the course although we were pretty much blown away on Glyder Fach yesterday. Today some sunnier weather made running river crossing protocols a bit more fun.


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