Todays weather was forecast to be awful with Heavy rain most of the day and winds gusting up to 70mph on the summits so we opted to make the most of a few hours of dry sunny weather in between the chaos!
We drove up to the Coire Ciste car park and made use the snow slope 50m from the van. We made good use of the time practising Winter Mountain Leader Rope work.
Digging bucket seats and buried ice axe belays and testing them by belaying each other and taking a few slides to practise the art of dynamic belaying. We then attached the rope to the ice axe anchors in the snow and attempted to make them fail by 4 of us pulling on the rope from the safety of the flat ground below. Gwilym backed up the axes with a braking system to prevent any failing axes flying toward us at speed.
Following this we had a look at stomper belays and snow bollards. We belayed each other up and down the slope using the stomper and using the snow bollard to back up our bucket seat.
To finish the session we used our snow bollards to abseil down the slope using the south african method.
It has been a useful 5 days in the Scottish highlands gaining log book time towards my Winter Mountain leader. Thanks to Gwilym from Wet and High Adventures for some pointers in the right direction.
Tomorrow I will be driving back down south, stopping off in Shropshire to attend a MIAS Level 3 mountain bike instructor course for two days before heading home to Taunton.
No comments:
Post a Comment