Thursday, 31 January 2013

CWA Day 2 and a few conditions

Day 2 of this week's CWA Training for the Higher Outdoor Learning course from West Highland College and today we hit the Ice Factor to look at various items from the syllabus. I was working with fellow MIC and Paddlesports Coach Andy Spink. We had the centre almost to ourselves for much of the day but I noticed some heavy precipitation and increasing winds outside and even some sea level wet snow for a while.
Andy demonstrates how we get from here...
 ...to here... in one move statically and dynamically?
 Students on the sharp end
So it was no surprise when Adele and Sam from Jagged Globe turned up to tell us about how unpleasant it hat turned on Ben Nevis today with tales of snow building rapidly and big sloughs. Other friends also fled the Ben empty-handed and a party climbed part of Aquafresh on good ice on Aonach Mor until the ice ran out. Abseiling back to the apron they had an unpleasant time of it finding that the scoured firm slopes in the morning were covering rapidly with snow that was inclined to slide with very little additional loading. Sounds like there was a bit of ice climbed on Creag Meaghaidh today too.

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