Self reliance is a fundamental principle of mountaineering. By participating we accept this and take responsibility for the decisions we make. These Conditions Reports are intended to help you make good decisions. They do not remove the need for you to make your own judgements when out in the hills.

Tuesday 19 May 2015


Day two of the West Highland College Summer ML Assessment took us to the East Face of Aonach Dubh. We were looking for steep, broken ground on which we could look at route choice, group management, and safeguarding people with and without a rope. We went to the small coire between Barn Wall and Far Eastern Buttress and we found plenty of interesting terrain.


There have been a couple of changes to the Summer Mountain Leader Syllabus in the last year or so including removing the use of ropes in stream crossings and the requirement to lower people down very steep crags. Instead we looked at safeguarding people on ground they could scramble down themselves. We did some abseiling too. However the use of a rope in the context of a Summer Mountain Leader is only in an emergency. Hopefully the candidates will manage to avoid emergencies in the future once they are qualified.




No comments:

Post a Comment