SCNL via The Zig Zags

Today Patrick and Denise and I went for a hill waking day in Glencoe. After a look at the forecast in the morning, the guys fancied something a little bit more 'hands on' so we headed for the Zig Zags on Gearr Aonach. After the interesting steps up, we were making good progress for the summit via the NE ridge and the weather was improving throughout. The cloud cover was around 1000m and rising, we eventually got a view of the summit of the Ben as well. We arrived to the top of SCNL with the wind quite strong and chilly, had some lunch then headed down the North shoulder back to the Corie floor. From here we took the footpath back down to the car park. Another good Red Letter Day.

Sunburn!

Today Chuck and I led a group of 25 up to the summit of Ben Nevis. Most of the group had little or no hill walking experience but they all had heaps of motivation which got all but 2 up to the summit. It ended being a very long day, just under 11 hours up and down but as the weather was nice we didn't really need to rush. As we got to the cars, patches of rain did come in but nothing fell as we were walking.

Ropework Training-13/08/2008

Today Big Al, Chuck and I went for a little staff training day in Glencoe. As I have my MIA Training booked in November, we thought it would be a good idea to start brushing up on my rope work skills. Today we decided to explore a new crag (Far East Buttress on Aonach Dubh) and Big Al ran me through some of the rope work considerations for teaching and guiding 2 clients at a time. Big Al led Chuck and I up Farewell Arete (V Diff, 3 pitches) in series, Chuck led Nirvana Wall (Severe, 3 pitches - the last excellent) in series and I led them both up Rough Slab (also Severe, 1 good long pitch with a grand finish) in parallel.

Climbing in Glen Nevis - 04/08/2008

Today I went down the Glen with a group of 5 from Fort William Primary school. They had all been down the Ice Factor and climbed there, so they had plenty of skills to put into practice. We only had a couple of hours so I tried to cram in as much climbing as possible. Everyone had a go at bottom roping, then practiced top roping, I set up an abseil which everyone went off quite competently. I then showed the guys how to place protection and they practiced this whilst climbing on a bottom rope. Nice day with a slight breeze, unfortunately not strong enough to keep the midgies away.