Before heading to Costa Blanca I’d heard really only of the Bernia Ridge, as it seems to be the one all Brits have done. Everyone speaks very highly of it – they clearly haven’t done any of the others!! I didn’t realise there were so many beautiful ridge lines here, with amazing natural sweeps of limestone forming great knife-edge ridges many hundreds of meters (or kilometres!) long.
The first one we did was totally by chance as we drove along and spotted the immaculate Benicadell Ridge – which made us go wow and immediately find out info about it.
In no particular order, below is a one sentence run down of each of the ones we did. The Bendicadell is far and away the best one, literally incomparably better, yet isn’t in the Rockfax guide – and the Bernia is by a long long margin the worst!! It turns out Rockfax made a mini guide to the Costa Blanca ridges, which we didn’t know until we’d already done most of them – but did spur us on at the end to finish them.
Bernia Ridge – nice setting, short section of horrendously polished climbing, lots of walking.
Castellat Ridge – bit of a bush bash to get on and off it, nicely exposed but really just a scramble.
Benicadell Ridge – totally amazing, several sections of climbing amongst loads of scrambling, goes on and on in a good way!
Toix Ridge – nice climb onto it, then a VERY short little scramble,
Segaria Ridge – really good, mostly scrambling but keeps coming at you, escapable at half way, some longer abseils than expected!
Gemma eyeing up the Benicadell Ridge in the Costa Blanca
After running a massive amount of RCI and RCDI training and assessments this last year, I thought I’d put some thoughts down on how best to prepare and consolidate to answer the question – how to pass you RCI…?
Go Climbing!!
First things first – the minimum requirements are ABSOLUTE minimum, and shouldn’t be the target – aim for well above. This is the case for the RCI training course too, we’re seeing people coming on the course with very limited experience, meaning they’re not absorbing all the info over the 3 days. The d-log says 15 trad leads and 5 sport climbs?! Id say come with at least double that – after all, that’s only 10 days worth of climbing at a pretty leisurely pace!! It’ll make your path way to assessment so much smoother! When you come to assessment you’ll no doubt have double that and it’ll be a breeze!
Read the Mountain Training RCI Handbook etc!!
Read the syllabus/handbook thoroughly pre and post training – and absorb the Libby Peters/Mountain Training Climbing handbook (remembering there’s stuff in there that’s beyond RCI). At the end of every course I email candidates these and The Skills Checklist – this is well worth going through and appraising yourself against the bullet points of the syllabus, thus identifying areas you might need to develop.
Perfect Practise makes Perfection Permanent..
The consolidation phase is where you get the chance to really practise, tweak, develop and solidify your skills – it’s really important! Again, the minimum requirements are MINIMUM! Make sure you keep going personal trad and sport climbing, but you’ll need to do a fair amount of ‘group style’ practise.
We talk about the need to have 20 assisting sessions. Being an outdoor award we want the bulk of these to be outdoors, but it’s worth having some indoor ones too! A half day or an evening is 1 session. Whats important though is these are actually learning experiences for you, that you reflect on what you’ve seen/done, and develop!
It is FAR more beneficial to assist actual instructors/outdoor centres, if you just take mates out and don’t shadow any instructed sessions, highly likely you’ll struggle! On these RCI assisting sessions, ideally you’ll initially be observing and helping out where you can – then as your relationships develop ideally they’d allow you to help with the rigging under their supervision. Doing this at a range of venues with a variety of clients, so you see some Top Roping, Bottom Roping, Group Abseils, warm ups/games/bouldering/weaselling, LOADS of group management and hopefully you’ll see the instructors problem solving when things don’t go to plan!
Then, get out on your own and rig the ropes independently for mates, getting quicker and slicker. Connect with other RCI trainees and go through things together, practising the ropework and problem solving. You can even practise slick rigging off the bannisters at home/trees in the garden! (not to climb on obviously!!) There are Facebook groups for RCI trainees, there are groups offering local shadowing opportunities, and going to meet Outdoor Centres will no doubt open the door for future employment too. Become a member of the Mountain Training Association, there will be local groups and CPD events to support you through the process.
Ready for your RCI?
Think you’re ready? I would recommend getting on an RCI refresher workshop , I run them as MTA cpd events and independently, just make sure who you do it with is actually a Provider or Course Director for the RCI scheme! That way you’ll get actual feedback from the people that work on the courses..
