Hill and Mountain Skills - with Mountain Training

Over the last two days, I've been on a 'Providers Training' course at Plas y Brenin, so that I can deliver some of the newer Mountain Training accredited courses - namely the Hill and Mountain Skills. Day one was an indoor event, with lectures, workshops and discussions about our role and how to facilitate the courses. There was also a bit of 'tech' advice for recording data on the centralised Mountain Training database.

Day 2 was looking at how, where and when to deliver certain aspects of the course. Unfortunately, this involved a day on the hill in some bitterly cold weather - fine while moving, but less good for standing around discussing the finer details! 

Some fantastic hailstorms swept up the valley on a stiff northerly wind and engulfed us periodically! The first snow of winter - for a while, the mountain tops were white.

I had multiple layers of jackets on and still felt cold in the northerly wind at times. During the day we traversed around from Cwm Bochllewyed and down a scramble into Cwm Idwal.

Halfway down the gully, another hail storm stopped us in our tracks for a moment while it put down a white layer of hailstones.

We decided to call it a day at this point and carried on down to the valley and the warmth of The Cottage fireside!