hills Archives - The Climbing Company

Prince’s Trust in Devon

By stu_mcinnes@hotmail.co.uk October 4, 2015 October 4, 2015 Courses, Instructional, work

This week I have been working for Reach Outdoors, with the Prince’s Trust in Devon. We have been with a fantastic bunch of young people, looking at helping them gain confidence, develop team work and leadership and improve their communication skills. all through outdoor activities and a planning and review process. These weeks are always super rewarding (sometimes a little hard work too!), but this weeks group were awesome. Throughout our week with the Prince’s Trust in Devon, we have been walking on Dartmoor, Gorge Walking and Rock Climbing amongst other things. The weather has been unreal, especially for the start of October! Lets hope next week is even half as good! Though it does look like the weather is on the turn…

Climbing with the Prince’s Trust in Devon

Gorge Walking with the Prince’s Trust in Devon

Walking with the Prince’s Trust on Dartmoor

This weekend has been spent in Dorset, getting some sunny sport climbing done on Portland. Coming from Pembrokeshire where every trip entails an adventurous abseil into a big crag for some trad climbing, it was great to rock up and do some relaxing sport climbing after my week with the Prince’s Trust in Devon…

Climbing on Portland

Climbing in Pembrokeshire

By stu_mcinnes@hotmail.co.uk September 29, 2015 September 29, 2015 Courses, Pembrokeshire, work

Last week we had a few days off at last! And it was a joy to be out on the crags climbing in Pembrokeshire for fun! As we hadn’t been on the limestone in a while, we spent a few days down there. Initially with Alun, but Bramble also got out of his kayak and came with us one day! Great company and some new places explored, and steep, adventurous routes done!

Climbing at St Govans

Steep ground Climbing in Pembrokeshire

Climbing through the Blow Hole

After a few days personal climbing in Pembrokeshire, I had a great day teaching lead climbing skills to Steve and Nikki. Being strong indoor climbers they picked up all the new skills quickly, and both did their first lead climbs in the Porth Clais area. Amazing weather and good company, hopefully they will both be back out on the cliffs again soon!

Steve on a course lead climbing in Pembrokeshire

After a busy Monday to Friday it was a quick trip to North Wales for the weekend… I was attending a “Train the Trainers” course at Plas Y Brenin. Run by Mike Raine, this course is aimed at those delivering training to candidates going through the national governing body awards, such as the SPA and ML. The goal is to get like minded people to explore different teaching styles and models, using mock clients. An interesting couple of days, and a joy to be in the hills in such amazing weather!

Teaching ML rope work in Snowdonia

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Ruminahui Ascent

By stu_mcinnes@hotmail.co.uk August 7, 2015 August 7, 2015 Adventures, Courses, work

The group had slightly more ambitious plans after their hike on Chimbarazo. An ascent of the technical 4700m peak Ruminahui was the goal. As we were well acclimatised by this point we made swift progress on the easy lower slopes, and were rewarded with spectacular views of a family on Condors floating above us on the mountain.

It was cold and blustery in the way up, with no views of what lay ahead, but it got much steeper the higher we ascended, and soon we were scrambling.

We got the rope out to protect the group for the last 20 meters or so, but they all managed to get to the exposed summit, their first bit of proper climbing at 4700m!

We didnt linger too long on top as it was pretty chilly and windy, once back down the rope we were able to move faster and warm up.

The clouds parted on the decent to give us some spectacular views… Well done on your ascent team… If your in the area, Ruminahui is well worth having a go at climbing, but it’s no pushover!

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Trekking on Chimbarazo…

By stu_mcinnes@hotmail.co.uk August 1, 2015 August 1, 2015 Adventures, work

This month I am in Ecuador working, taking a bunch of school kids trekking in the Andes, followed by some time in the Jungle and doing some sight seeing and exploring…

We flew into Quito and took it easy for a few days, as the altitude in Ecuadors capital city is over 3000m. We had a nice day out walking up nearby Ilalo Peak to get great views of the city. Once we transferred to a place called El Chaupi we spent a few days acclimatising by getting out in walks, notably up to 4000m on Cerro El Corazon- the team started feeling the altitude here!

Our main trek was around Chimbarazo, at 6300m it’s summit is famous for being the point furthest from the centre of the Earth, due to Equatorial bulge…. Our high point was planned to be the Whymper Refuge at 5000m.

The first night in our tents at 4200m was a wild one! The weather was bad enough to batten down the hatches and stay in the tents for 15 hours… The scenery the next day made up for our rough night though…

The third day was a long one! Trekking up to the refuge at 4800m took a good 10 hours. The team really pushed hard and we arrived in a flurry of snow to warm drinks and a welcome rest! The views from up here once the cloud cleared in the morning were awesome!

The final day we headed up to 5000m at a slow steady pace, it was only a short walk up to here and the bright sunshine warned everyone despite the strong winds and cold weather. Our descent was truly awesome. After traversing to a historic cave that has been used for over 500 years for Inca rituals, we had a long sandy descent, reminiscent of running down a sand dune – for a thousand meters!

A great time was had by all, and a big sense of accomplishment for the guys who have done very little of this sort of stuff before. The acclimatisation stood us in good stead for our next ascent….

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Walking Skills in Pembrokeshire

By stu_mcinnes@hotmail.co.uk June 30, 2015 June 30, 2015 Courses

This week I have been working and walking in Pembrokeshire on behalf of TYF delivering walking skills courses to students from Tormead School. The walking skills were delivered in the under-visited Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. The area is famous for the Bluestones (Spotted Dolerite rock) that were actually used in the inner circle at Stonehenge… Its pretty mad that all that time ago these massive stones were transported 200km! Aliens? Glaicial erratics? Rolled on logs? You decide!

The site of the Bluestones from Stonehenge

We started the week with a big dump of rain, the first in what seems like months here, and finished in sweltering heat! The focus of the walking skills course was to give the students a grounding in decision making and risk assessing, hopefully leading to them being safer walkers and scramblers in the future. As well as looking at map reading skills and plenty of fauna and flora, we spend much of the time scrambling around the various summit rocks.

Summit rocks on Carn Menyn

The area is usually deserted, which is mad! There is loads of potential for short scrambles and bouldering to spice up your day, and it feels like a proper upland environment. I really enjoy running mountain skills courses here, it’s great for navigation and the aforementioned scrambling, plus contains loads of fauna and flora and sites of historical significance. As well as the usual plants, mosses and lichens, we were lucky enough to see loads of Ravens and spot a Peregrine close up…

Ben above an old Ravens nest in the Preseli Hills

A great week working with Ben was had, and we had a few great nights down Whitesands Beach and Abereiddy with the students soaking up the sun and the ever amazing Pembrokeshire sunsets…

Whitesands Beach Sunset