Scottish Mountains, sunshine and blue skies

Over the last week I have been up in the Cairngorms on my Winter Mountain Leader Training. Throughout the whole week the weather has been amazing, pretty cold with blue skies giving us great views across the national park. We were based in Grantown on Spey just to the North, which gave us a number of options for venues to escape the crowds of the Northern Corries. The course was run by Pete Hill MIC for 6 trainees looking to develop and consolidate our skills to, after an assessment, take groups in to the demanding winter mountain environment. The structure of the course enabled us all to get the most out of Pete and a lot of learning took place. The course covered areas such as: ice axe arresting, crampon techniques, step cutting, steep ground anchors, night navigation, snow holing, avalanche awareness, group management and loads more. It was an intense course, with 6 days in the mountains wearing everyone down mentally as well as physically.

Ice axe arresting, an essential but often overlooked skill necessary for traveling in the winter environment. Just think, when was the last time you practiced ice axe arresting? Bet it's been a while, like myself, it is not a skill that many people purposely go to the mountains to practice. We spent a good part of our first day on the course practicing, analysing and coaching each other on the 3 main variations of the arrest; sliding sat up face forwards, on your front head first and on your back head first. Each variation requires its own sequence of movements to finish in an successful arrest. Following milder temperatures last week the current cold air had consolidated the snow pack to make it really stable and hard, which made for fast sliding. It was really beneficial for us all to work on this skill as we worked with each other and Pete to scrutinise every slide as there are so many parts to the overall arrest it is easy to forget one whilst concentrating on another.

 

The final 2 days of the course were spent on a mini expedition with an overnight in a snow hole. I had only snow holed once before on a trip to the Cairngorms with university. I remembered it as a cold, wet, unorganised affair, but still being a brilliant experience. We headed into the small corrie of Ciste Mhearad above the ski runs and close to the summit of Cairngorm. Our snow holes were based on a Kaloo design with a Christmas tree shape dug into the snow pack before mushrooming the inside with a platform to sleep on before covering the upper triangular section with snow blocks leaving a small entrance with room to crawl through. Digging our snow hole took around three and a half hours and is pretty intense work. As the sun began to set and dropped out of view, the temperature dropped significantly, hitting -8 at 4pm. Inside the temperature was a lot more bearable, and with a few candles dotted about on shelves cut into the snow, creating a warm orange glow within our kaloo. I was glad to get back into the kaloo after spending a few hours out on night navigation in the evening, and get into the warmth of my sleeping bag. It was surprisingly comfortable warm nights sleep, and completely changed my view on snow holing. What a great experience to be in the middle of such a wild, hostile environment but escape the elements in a shelter that you have created yourself.

For anyone interested in finding out more about the Winter Mountain Leader Award some info can be found here: http://www.mountain-training.org/award-schemes/ml-winter

 
Also worth checking out is Pete Hill's website if you're interested in any mountain courses or awards: http://www.petehillmic.com/

I have also created a Winter ML top tips page from the notes I made during my course, hopefully a worthwhile resource for anyone involved on the Winter ML scheme.