John Chivall, Outdoor Instructor

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. I've spent most of the winter preparing for the assessment for the MLTS Winter Mountain Leader Award, and getting a small bit of winter climbing in. Originally I was booked on an assessment course at the end of January. This was cancelled and I was transferred to a course three weeks later, in February. Only a few days beforehand I was apologetically told that another candidate on that course had injured themselves, bringing the ration too low for the course to continue, and so I would have to transfer to a course a month later yet.

After all that shenanigans, and the mild and wet weather at the start of March, I was almost expecting the assessment to be cancelled yet again, due to lack of snow, but just a few days before the course started we had a big dump over Scotland, with snow in the streets in Glasgow. Hooray! By the time the candidates assembled in Aberfeldy on the Sunday evening, there were several feet of snow in places on the hills and the avalanche forecasts were all showing red.

The first day started with a positively alpine drive to the Braes of Foss car park, where we had to use our snow shovels to clear a big enough space for us to get the vehicles parked before breaking trail up Scheihallion for some step kicking and cutting and ice axe braking. All went well, and as we walked back down our previously cleared trench the cloud broke giving us clear views north and east to the Tarf and Tilt hills. The next day saw us up on the side of Meall Corranaich by Ben Lawers, demonstrating our skills at safeguarding parties on steep ground. This was complicated by the soft snow, seemingly bottomless at times, which had an infuriating habit of collapsing at just the wrong moment.

The next three days were the expedition phase of the assessment. Normally, a group on WML assessment would dig snowholes to sleep in, but the forecast was for positive temperatures for both the following nights, so we carried tents to stay in rather than risk getting buried in melting snowholes. As it turned out, we had clear skies and cold nights for the whole expedition, with blazing sunshine each day.

Would you believe that this is Scotland?

Spot the deer tracks

We walked in up Glen Sassunn from Innerhadden, again breaking trail in calf- to knee-deep snow for most of the way, before setting up camp. In the late afternoon, we waded up the hillside to a snowbank where we could demonstrate our ability to make effective emergency shelters in the snow. We also dug avalanche pits to interpret the snowpack and demonstrate some shear tests. After a cold night, we set out again into the alpine snows for a round of Cairn Mairg and Meall Garbh, two nearby Munros. All day we were assessed on our navigation ability and party management. Back at the tents after eight hours of hard going on the hill, we had a few hours to get some food and sleep before packing up camp and setting out again in the dark for some night navigation over a bealach and down the the Rannoch Forest. With clear sky and a large and bright full moon, the biggest difficulty was the unrelenting snow under foot, which in the cold had developed a crust which would bear your weight for most of a step before collapsing. Our speed dropped to around 2km/h as we slogged up and over the pass. Eventually the forest on the other side was reached, and we were able to follow Landrover tracks out to the road, which we reached at about 1.30am.

Thankfully, after all the hard work everyone had put in to prepare, and the extreme effort out on the hill, everyone passed. Thank you to our fair, honest and patient assessors, Stuart Johnston and John Sanders of Stuart Johnston Mountaineering climbmts.co.uk.

As I write this in Glasgow with the sun shining outside and temperatures well into double figures, it seems winter is over for another year. Come next December, I'll be providing winter skills courses and guided winter walks - more information will be added to this site in due course. Until then, it's back to the usual round of centre work, DofE expedition supervising, climbing wall instructing, teaching navigation, and maybe a little playing on the rock!