Grant recipient(s): Alex Tuck
Course description: 2-day Winter Skills course in the Cairngorms with Alpha Mountaineering
Course cost: £100
Grant awarded: £70
This course provided an ideal introduction to winter walking, and was very appropriate for the types of conditions that might be experienced on a club trip in winter. The course covered the use of ice axes and crampons, crossing/ascending/descending snow slopes, emergency belaying techniques, emergency shelter construction and testing for avalanche-prone conditions.
The skills acquired from this course will (and have already) be useful both for weekend and holiday trips in winter, as well as unofficial club trips (of which there currently seem to be an increasing number). I would encourage more grants to be made for this type of course, as these skills are only really useful if everyone in a walking group has them – so the more people in the club proficient in winter walking, the more opportunities there will be to put them into practise.
The guide, Nick Carter, was excellent. He seemed fairly competitively priced, and was extremely knowledgeable. We combined learning new skills with having decent walks (and bagging Cairn Gorm in the process!), and Nick was very efficient at replying to correspondence. He added some photos of our 2 days to his website, and provided a CD with many other photos on. I would definitely recommend him to others wanting a guide in Scotland – for walking, scrambling or climbing.