Scrambling forms a core subset of members' activities on trips, and this course offered an introduction to roping techniques for scrambling.

"We learnt basic techniques involving ropes to make scrambling safer. We covered roping in, moving as a group on a rope, belaying techniques, as well as abseiling. The first day was around Glenridding and was a good introduction, and we put the skills into practice on the second day, near Langdale. Each of the three group members had the opportunity to lead and benefit from Iain's close guidance."

Participants learnt a variety of rope skills, including "familiarity with kit/equipment for scrambling (harness, climbing rope, krabs, slings, nuts), familiarity with knots (figure-8, clove hitch, overhand knot, italian knot) , be-laying techniques (body belaying, direct & indirect belaying), selecting safe anchors, moving together with a rope, ensuring secure nut placement, assisting and safeguarding other scrambling parties, ensuring good communication between scrambling members."

Good and bad feedfback about the course:

• Very well organized course, experienced instructors, felt safe throughout, right group size, second day provided opportunity to put material learned on first day to practice
• I was overall very satisfied with the course. I feel I have learnt some valuable skills should I ever want to do a more involved course to build on that. More importantly, I had never done any climbing / serious scrambling so the course offered me a good introduction to it!
• Useful to increase confidence in scrambling and feel more secure on more challenging terrain
• Course format is very good. The instructor Iain was very nice, knowledgeable and pedagogical.
• Really helpful skills, friendly and knowledgeable instructor, opens up new doors
• Could be a bit slow sometimes, thought we would be able to cover more
• Scrambling on first day involved climbing up through lots of heather

Anyone can have an accident at any time – it’s a sad fact of life. Knowing first aid skills relevant to dealing with an accident is really important: as well as potentially saving a life, you’ll also feel much more comfortable and confident out and about.

REC 2 is all about basic steps to take to preserve life and aid recovery, with a heavy slant on first aid in the outdoors where resources may be limited and help be some time away.

Skills acquired:

• First aid kit – equipment to pack in different situations.
• Concrete first aid techniques – First response procedure (DRABC), CPR, recovery position, choking, log roll, dressing injuries, tourniquets, epi-pens, etc. Also more generalised advice on hypothermia, stroke, burn, diabetes, tics and more.
• Practice in first response and preliminary diagnosis with lots of simulated first aid situations.
• Legal / procedural aspects of providing first aid and medicine – very useful as (Arion is the) incoming safety officer. Would recommend to future incoming safety officers if they don't already have this experience.

Good and bad points about the course:

• Being an outdoors course, the scenarios were all really relevant to hillwalking and climbing. Being on the course with other outdoors-y people meant lots of people had their own experiences to share.
• Lots of practical work – practising techniques on dummies and real people, and extended injury simulations which were very useful in synthesising these techniques.
• Tangentially, it was good to practise using an epi-pen (+other brands) as I can never remember which way up it goes!
• The trainer was experienced and we got a lot of practical training, a bit more on hypothermia would have been nice.