Mountain Leader Training Course at Plas y Brenin in Snowdonia
The ML training course run by Plas y Brenin is an excellent course for competent and experienced hillwalkers. In 6 days it covers pretty much all areas of hillwalking skills including advanced navigation, emergency ropework, emergency procedures, group leadership and campcraft. It develops your knowledge of the weather, the environment and the landscape.
The centre is very well run, the rooms are smart, the food excellent and the staff friendly and excellent teachers. The cost may be high but it is well worth it.
Grant recipient(s): Ian Patrick
Course description: ISM Student Alpine Week
Course cost: £635
Grant awarded: £50
In summer 2009 I went on the Student Alpine Week course offered by the ISM, based in Leysin and operating throughout the Swiss Valais. The course focuses on providing someone with hill walking and a little climbing experience with the skills necessary to be a safe alpine mountaineer.
The course covered all of the necessary techniques to get started in mountaineering, and included many of the skills needed for scrambling and winter walking in the UK. Our guide was friendly and helpful, and tailored the course to suit the group as the week went on. We managed successful ascents of the Pigne de la Le and the Pigne d’Arolla.
After the course we held the club trip at Saas Grund, where we climbed the Alphubel (4206m) – I definitely feel capable of mountaineering with friends unguided after my experiences on the course.
The course is excellent value compared to similar non-student courses, and I thoroughly recommend it to any experienced walker itching to get up some alpine peaks!
A great course for those new to navigation is the Pete Hawkins Bronze map and compass course. You will be introduced to the nuances of navigating over the course of two evening lectures and two practice days in Tideswell, in the Peak District.
Pete goes beyond the Bronze syllabus and allows you to practise not just map reading, but also compass navigation in a small group setting. Pete has 25+ years of hillwalking experience, and knows how to tailor the course at an individualised level, making him an ideal teacher.
I learned a whole lot in a really relaxed atmosphere, and the course was easy to get to by public transportation. If you need a place to stay, I recommend Poppies B&B as is it as cheap as a youth hostel, is ideally situated for the course, and is actually quite nice! I certainly would recommend this course for beginner navigators!
The outdoor first aid course I attended was refreshingly different in content and way of teaching to other first aid courses I have been on previously. The excellent quality of teaching and interactive scenarios was a great way to learn, not just about treatment but also about the victim's point of view.
It was a hard two days, with over 8 hours teaching both days, but the result is well worth it. Since the course, I have felt much more confident about treating people in the outdoors and would recommend every hillwalker to do a similar course.
Winter Skills Day during a trip to Scotland at New Year 2009
On the first day of the unofficial New Year trip to Corrour, those of us who hadn't done any winter walking before hired a guide to teach us anything he thought we needed to know. We learned to walk using crampons and ice axes - uphill, downhill and sideways - and practised slipping (in my case often unintentionally) and grabbing the ice axe.
Learning ice axe arrests was good fun although our instructor felt we should concentrate on not needing to do one. We even tried some very easy "ice-scrambling". I discovered the truth in the phrase "the right tool for the right job" - in other words if you try to put Dave's size eleven crampons on Caroline's size four boots, Caroline will spend a lot of time carrying one of them.