Thursday 17 March 2011

Weekend Scrambling course in Snowdonia

Back in January I booked Paul and Craig in for a weekend of mountaineering skills. Ideally they wanted to work on winter skills but were also keen to get involved with some scrambling and navigation if snow and ice was lacking. With winter very much on the back burner in Snowdonia we spent Saturday looking at basic mountaineering skills on the Glyders. We focused on navigation and grade 1 scrambling ground. We headed up the side of Gribin Facet and then onto the classic grade 1 Gribin Ridge. The cloud was low and very thick which made route choice and navigation tricky but provided excellent conditions for learning! Craig and Paul navigated across the plateau using their newly learnt compass and map skills and got us safely to the top of Gyder Fawr and down past Llyn y Cwn and into Cwm Idwal.

Summit of Glyder Fawr

Scrambling on the Gribin Ridge


On Sunday I jetted off to France for some skiing and left the boys in the capable hands of fellow mountaineering instructor Paul for some advanced scrambling. It turned into a fine and sunny day so Paul took them up Seniors Ridge direct start (grade 2) and then the awesome Cneifion Arete (grade 3). Paul got the boys to do some leading and belaying to introduce them to the skills needed to tackle grade 3 scrambles.
It was a great weekend and I look forward to seeing Paul and Craig some time soon for some more adventures!

On Cneifion Arete

Craig belaying using an Italian Hitch

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