Thursday, 20 February 2014

19th February 2014 - Winter ML refresher & the Fort William Mountain Festival MRT fundraiser night

Today i headed up to Aonach Mor with Graham, John and Lawrence to refresh some winter ml rope work skills in preparation for their upcoming assessments. We headed up towards the Nid ridge, and found a suitable site to go over some sliding, before looking more in depth at winter anchors. The guys built snow bollards, buried axe anchors, practiced stomper belays and dug loads of bucket seats. Hopefully the day was good for them and gave some good pointers for the assessment. I have no doubt they will all pass no problem.

After tea and cake I heard home to prepare for the evening. I was the compere for the Lochaber Mountain Rescue fundraiser night at the Ben Nevis Inn as part of the fort William mountain festival. It was a great night, with some inspirational films bring shown, a fun raffle and a superb presentation by Joe Beaumont who has come from a serious climbing accident to take on some serious challenges that even fully able bodied people would seriously struggle to complete. We look forward to seeing Joe again later in the year as he completes one of these challenges. Read more of Joe's story here.

It was a really nice evening and great to see people turning up to support the team!! Check out the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Teams new revamped website for more information on what we do, where we do it and why!

The next few nights we will be at the festival in the Nevis Centre promoting the Carpe Diem zone which is offering people the chance to get free guiding on a number of routes to the top of Ben nevis with a qualified guide. In return, all wet ask is that at the top we spend some time picking up rubbish to leave a cleaner mountain for future visitors. The guiding day is on the 20th September 2014 and is in association with Friends of Nevis and the John Muir Trust, so why not come along to the exhibition area and get involved!!

Self arrest practice
John building a snow bollard
Furious digging to create a bucket seat
Beginning to build a buried axe belay
Joe Beaumont giving his presentation

No comments:

Post a Comment

I appreciate all of your comments, ideas and feedback, so feel free to put your thoughts to text here, thanks :)