Most of this winter has been focused around one thing – successfully
getting through my Winter ML assessment, so I think its worth sharing my suffering by forcing you to read a blow by blow account ! There are no pictures, I couldn't stop concentrating long enough to take them and in any case the visibility was so poor there was nothing to see !
By mid February, I had the remaining holes in my logbook plugged and had also attended a very useful week of CPD with Phil Dowthwaite, re-visiting the skills required and ways of teaching them. Following a brief interlude for my IML winter
training - which had some cross-over but
not as much as expected – and a family ski holiday, I headed back to Scotland for
the final push. This was to be 2.5 weeks
including the assessment in the last week and I had partners and groups lined
up for a mini exped and skills / ropework as well as some enjoyable winter and
climbing days. However, fate stuck a
huge spanner in the wheel when, after a
hard 4 days with my Alps buddies, I came
down with flu – just 1 week prior to assessment. After trying to ignore it for a
day, I limped back home feeling very sorry for myself and ended up in bed for 3
days, the assessment now an impossibility – gutted !
However .... once able to get out of my sick bed, I set about
investigating options for booking an assessment elsewhere, determined to try
and keep the momentum rolling and hoping the insurance would help with the cost. I looked
no further than Pete Hill, who is not only the biggest provider of assessments,
but also the cheapest :-) At this stage, I was still feeling ropey but reasoned
that another 3 weeks would see me right.
In the end though, it was mighty close and I finally set off for Scotland on the
Wednesday prior, still feeling below par, no guinea pigs available this time and with my previous
confidence ebbing away, a less than encouraging forecast only added to my
angst.
I managed a couple of light days around Choire Cas and Choire
na Ciste, brushing up on steep ground and movement skills before a more
encouraging day navigating in Glen Feshie and headed off the guest house in pensive
mood. The guest house, Kinross House in
Grantown, certainly helped to lift my spirits.
This is a well appointed, comfortable place with a great guest lounge, superb
breakfast and owners who understand walkers / climbers – at the end of the day
our wet kit was whisked away to re-appear nicely dried when we came down for
breakfast. My room-mate was also a good
guy, an ex marine called Steve who would be my partner for the next 4.5 days.
Day 1: Ben Rinnes,
poor vis, strong winds, snow.
This started with
introductions to Pete (a giant of a man) a review of the home paper and the
weather / avalanche forecast – so far so good.
After two days of falling snow and strong winds, the amount
of drifting snow caused the road to Cairngorm to be closed and we went to a
location close to Pete’s home in Aberlour, called Ben Rinnes. The emphasis of the day was on personal skills and teaching
including self arrest, step kicking and cutting, crampon technique and related
snowcraft skills, as well as leadership, navigation and emergency shelter
construction. Unfortunately, we had to use maps provided as Ben Rinnes was off
the maps we were asked to bring and these were 1:50k. Now, as I am no longer a
spring chicken, my close up vision is not what it was, so when I use 1:50k maps
I blow them up to 1:25k via my Anquet map software so I don’t have the issue of
trying to use reading glasses. So, with
the slightly faded map provided, seeing where I was supposed to be going at the
original scale was a bit of a challenge, and at this stage I also found out
that Altimeters were not going to be allowed :-( I’m still not sure how I did on the nav ! The
skills work seemed to go ok, though we were all pulled up on our ice axe
arrest, told we had all made the same mistake on our head first / stomach down
runs and asked to work out what it was for homework. Beyond this, we were given no feedback at all (Pete had warned us that we wouldn't) which made it hard to know how we were doing.
Additionally for home work, we had to prepare a 3 day / two
night expedition for a group of fit novices with the possibility of using snowholes
using the forecasts expected that week – this to be ready for Wednesday.
Day 2: Ben Rinnes, snowing,
even more windy, even less vis ! (no access to Cairngorm plateau)
With the Cairngorm road still closed it was off to a
different location in the Ben Rinnes area again, this time with Malcolm ‘Ginge’
Lee MBE, former OC of the RAF outdoor AT Centre at Grantown. The emphasis of this
day was on navigation (again), group management, steep ground issues, emergency
use of rope, snow anchors, confidence roping. We did a bit of confidence work
on the way up – sans rope. Conditions were testing at the steep ground location,
soft snow over heather with little hard base. We had to use anchors of our
choice for group descent scenarios – I chose a stomper, boot axe belay and also
a west coast stomper which proved controversial ! This technique really seems
to divide instructors – I demonstrated it to be safe to Ginge and he accepted it
but also made it clear he personally did not like it much ! We also had to demonstrate and use an abseil
anchor – snow bollard was the choice for all of us. Following the abseil we had to build an
emergency shelter in the bank below which was then useful to sit in and eat lunch out of
the wind and snow :-) After lunch we went into nav mode in what was
now a white-out and full blown blizzard.
One of the guys had a ‘mare on his nav leg, not finding his destination and
then spending quite a time trying unsuccessfully to find it.
We then took it in turns getting us off the hill in worsening conditions.
Once a degree of vis was restored, we finished off with more confidence rope work before
a final briefing and welcome feedback – we had all done at least ‘well enough’
on the rope work - phew !
Day 3-5 Expedition Day
3: Cairngorm Plateau, more wind, snow flurries and windblown snow, poor vis
Following another weather and avalanche check, we set off
for expedition. Pete negotiated passage past the snowgate to the Ciste car park
and we set off from there. This day included navigation, route choice in the avalanche
conditions (basically avoid avalanche angle aspects that didn’t have an 'East' in
them somewhere !) some general questions on environment and snowhole building.
We used Ciste Mhearad, not what Pete would have liked in an ideal world as it was too popular and too close, but the sensible choice in the challenging conditions.
Digging the hole was also a challenge due to a hard icey layer below the softer
newer stuff but we got a break after about 1.5 hours when we broke into part of an
old hole which we could enlarge somewhat, thus creating an inner chamber and providing a luxury 2 room hole complete with guest lounge ! After a brief rest and dinner it was
out on night nav, wandering round in blizzard conditions for nearly 3 hours
hoping we had hit our spots before returning to the hole, a welcome brew, cake
and a surprisingly comfortable sleep.
Day 4 was very much more of the
same though more of an emphasis on group management and care with some
avalanche awareness thrown in and more blind navigation / relocation than
previously – all of this in very poor visibility and strengthening winds –
stronger than expected; it looked like the forecast storm for Friday was coming
in early. This was a hard and stressful day with very little visibility to inform us of our accuracy and the added pressure of concentrating on the welfare of our group. The last exercise of the day
was a group plan back to the snowhole from near the goat track. I really didn’t fancy the path over Cairngorm
as it was in prime avalanche aspect but after stating my case twice didn’t seem
to get much buy in from the group who wanted to take a line over Sneachda to
point 1141, then over Cairngorm to make navigation easier. At this stage I should
have stuck to my guns but didn’t and we took the proposed line, me leading the
leg off. When we got to the ascent of Cairngorm
it was clear the snow situation wasn’t great and Pete basically told Steve who
was now leading that he needed to traverse round and avoid the steeper section –
lesson learned but major mistake, could it cost us a pass ? Once back near the Ptarmigan, one of the
other guys just had to lead us back to the hole, but inexplicably, after getting
to the ski tow didn’t go to the end and take a new bearing. He just kept walking and after 500m it was
clear we had missed it. I had an idea which direction, but another guy felt it
was in the opposite direction – this was soon shown to be wrong by the slope
angle and aspect and we headed off in my direction, though Pete decided he
wanted to show us where we were by use of a GPS Grid reference as conditions
were now truly appalling. After getting
back to the snowholes and relaxing a little, Pete called a conflab; the
weather was worsening and we should probably walk out now as morning would only
be harder and we’d probably be clearing the snowholes all night. Decision made,
we had a tortuous walk down through the ski area, 80 mph winds constantly trying to knock us off our feet. A brief respite behind the cafe
for a group debrief, was followed by an even worse stagger along the access road – at one
point I felt like doing a ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. Finally we made it back to the cars ... where
I found I had a flat battery and an engine bay full of snow - some idiot had left my lights on :-/ With much appreciated
help from Pete and the other guys and Pete’s jump leads I got the van started and we skated down to the
snow gate, parked up and waited one by one for the individual debrief and
result. I’d agreed to go last and one by
one the others came back with ‘deferred’.
My turn and I was sure this was my fate also, particularly as the discussion
started with 'areas for improvement' and we discussed the judgement error on the last leg back
to the snowhole. However, a number of positive comments later, I
was still shocked to be told I had PASSED - I could have kissed him, ginger beard and all :-)
All that remained then was to high tail it back
south before the roads were shut. I floated all the way on cloud 9, despite a
slippery Drumochter Pass and the jack-knifed lorries over Shap !
Having now had time to recover
and contemplate, I regard it as one of the toughest things I have done and
passing it is one of my prouder achievements, particularly as I definitely wasn’t
fully fit, the aftermath of the flu bug was still lingering as a cold and
hacking cough. I also thought Pete got the assessment week about right, tough but not overly so and fair, though I do think a bit of feedback does no harm. Assessment IS tough, but then again the conditions in which a WML
operates can be tough. I have thoughts
and comments about the WML syllabus, which I have fed into the current review and will
post here shortly, but overall I think it is about right – but then again I
guess I would say that now I’ve passed :-)
