If you are a hill walker looking to get into scrambling and mountaineering, these are the skills you may want to have:
1. Rope Flake, Coil & Carry 2. Retrievable Classic Abseil 3. Bucket Seat 4. Body Belay Climbing 5. Body Belay Lowering 6. Placing A Sling Runner While Climbing 7. Using Terrain As A Runner While Climbing 8. Simple Climbing Calls 9. Only Move/Climb When Rope Is Tight 10. Never Ever Have Slack In Your System! 11. Direct Belay (belaying from your anchor) 12. In-Direct Belay (belaying from your body) 13. Direct Belay: Rope Friction Belay Around Rock Anchor 14. Direct Belay: Italian Hitch Belay From Sling, Around Rock Anchor 15. Know When To Turn Back 16. Interpreting A Weather Forecast 17. Testing Handholds, Footholds & Anchors
You can get these skills from a more experienced partner, reading, youtube or do a training course with us. If relying on youtube make sure the skills being displayed are proper best practice.
Tick Off Points: When navigating from A to B; before you begin
moving pick two/three/four points from your map, along your route. These
points need to be obvious and reasonably foolproof. Ideally they need to be features you will physically hit and not something you may see in the distance.
So, for example, as you move from A to B you are expecting to pass a
forest, cross a stream and go through a col. You tick off these features
as you go and you know things are going to plan.
If you miss one or two
tick off points it can act as an early warning system to stop and
reassess.
Cut Off Point: When navigating from A to B; before you begin
moving pick a point from your map, just beyond your destination. This
point needs to be obvious and reasonably foolproof, for example,
cliff/lake/change of slope/headland/island.
It has to be a feature you will physically hit and not something you may see in the distance.
If you reach this point it will cut off your progress and let you know
you have overshot/gone too far - hence the name Cut Off Point. We
sometimes overshoot our destination on purpose, to hit the cut off
point and establish everything is good, especially in times of poor
visibility.
Organising gear yesterday morning before a 6am dawn/sunrise sea kayak tour I came across this beautiful big hedgehog in the yard; heading for the oak and birch woods.
First live hedgehog I have seen in years - brilliant to see!
Most of us are often dehydrated at the best of times. With this baking weather - working outside can become a major issue.
Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are more real than you might think.
Our instructor tip, which we use, is a simple homemade hydration drink:
1 liter water + 1 teaspoon salt + 1 tablespoon sugar.
Really simple and
really effective! Way tastier and far more inexpensive than your
chemist dioralyte stuff.
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