Been to the Ben today.. Luckily Jim had the gate key which meant a nice handy walk into the CIC hut. Lots of fresh snow so we did South West Arete to stay out of the gullies. A Great day

Just had a great day on Creag Meagaidh. We headed up a route called South Pipe Direct (IV,4) but conditions soon turned nasty with lots of spin drift and loose powder so we changed course and headed up Stag Horn Gully..a good day and now off for a well deserved pint!

Today we ran the first of 3 sets of the Neil Gresham’s Climbing Masterclass Series with Robbie Phillips as our coach. Robbie started each session with a recap of basic movement skills then moved on to specific boulder problems to highlight certain aspects of position and balance. Then it was on to leading routes and putting the new skills into practice – all whilst being filmed for feedback later. A special thanks to Robbie who came across from Edinburgh especially to help Vertigo Outdoor with these sessions and to UCD who played host and let us use theie great lead wall facility. What a brilliant day!

Today along with Andy and Heather we headed out to The Bridge of Orchy to climb a couple of very accessible Munros and take a look at a climb I’d like to try later this week.  We headed up the rocky ridge of Beinn Dorain and did a little bit of compass navigation work as the terrain was ideal for it. We then headed across to Beinn an Dothaidh and looked at snow anchors and tested some snow packs. A nice day but temperatures are rising.

I decided to head up to the North face of Ben Nevis today to climb Fawlty Towers graded Scottish III*. Tim and I made it up to the base of the climb in good time and initially conditions were looking very good but after the first pitch I decided not to press on any further as there was no consolidated ice and was struggling to find frozen turf. With a quick abseil we decided to make a mountaineering day of it and traversed the Douglas Boulder via West Gully (I*) and descended East Gully (I). This is a great day out itself and one I’d definitely use again with clients.

Terrance on pitch 1 of Fawlty Towers III*

This weekend has had all the VO staff really busy on a REC 2 First aid course. Running the Course was our friend Mark “Baggy” Richards. Baggy gave a great 2 day course where we did lots of practical sessions mixed with easy to understand theory..We had catastrophies with Wheely bins, killer hedge rows and loads of laughs! Cheers Baggy for a great weekend!

Well we are now in the last few days of 2011 and its been really busy for the staff at VO. We have had Mountain Skills courses, Rock Climbing (in December!!), Mountain Ropework, Navagation, Italian HOT ROCK and lots of Gaisce award bookings and we are now getting ready for our annual trip to Scotland. So may I take this opportunity to thanks all the customers of VO in 2011. Its been a great year and seen us go from strength to strength and its you guys that make it all possible. Also a huge thank you to the Intructors who work for us. Without your passion and professionalism it wouldn’t be possible either! Here’s to an amazing 2012!!!!
Rob & Willie, VO

St Kevin’s College in Crumlin run an Outdoor Recreation course for people that want to work in the adventure sports industry. I’ve just finished teaching on a two day Mountain Skills 1 course with some of the students.

Day 1 – We started the walk just up from the Glenmacnass waterfall and hand railed our way up by Lough Brook stream to Lough Ouler. On the walk up to the Lough we talked about personal equipment and what’s appropriate for a walk such as this one. From the Lough we made our way over some spot heights and cols, eventually making our way to the 3rd highest summit in Wicklow, Tonelagee 817m (backside to the wind). The mountain skills one course is designed to teach hill walkers simple navigation techniques, map reading skills and become familiar with recognising natural features. Throughout the day we visited a re-entrant, several cols, spurs and tops and also discussed mountain hazards.

Tonelagee towering over Lough Ouler

Day 2 - The idea for day two is to reinforce everything learned on day one and incorporate measuring distance, timing and some pacing. Our walk for day two started at the Shay Elliott memorial car park and focused on pacing. Getting the students to pace out 100 metres ten times is a sure way to get a solid pace number. This works very well here  because once you’ve paced the kilometre you should be smack bang on a top, thus showing the students exactly how pacing works. From here we split into two groups and went separate ways around Cullentragh mountain, again visiting several cols, spurs, tops and a re-entrant.

Today I was working on day 1 on a Mountain Skills 2 course. I had two students from the Outdoor Education course in Colaiste Dhulaigh and three private clients who have all completed the Mountain Skills 1 course and decided to progress onto the next stage. Also out with us was Ryan, a Mountain Leader trainee observing and gaining experience before his ML assessment.

We started our walk at the Shay Elliot Monument car park in Wicklow. The first thing we did was look at setting our maps by using obvious land features and then setting our maps using our compass.

Just to get started we looked at our timing and worked out a nice simple navigation leg exactly 1km from the car park. According to William Naismith, the average human walks on average 5km per hour. This means 1km should usually take us 12 minutes (not considering height gain). Our first leg was 1km in distance and took us exactly 12 minutes. From that point onwards we started to build on our navigation skills and as usual we focused on the five D’s.

• Direction – Compass bearing from A to B
• Distance – How much ground between A and B
• Duration – How long it should take walking from A to B
• Description – What the land is doing between A and B
• Destination – What the land should be doing when we arrive at B

The group approaching the Derrybawn Ridge

For the past two days I have been teaching on a Mountain Skills 2 course with students from the outdoor education course in Colaiste Dhulaigh. The MS 2 course builds on MS 1 and covers the use of a compass, route planning/choice, night navigation, steep ground/scrambling, emergency procedures and looks at mountain rescue services in Ireland.

Day 1 – We started the walk at the Glenmacnass waterfall car park below Tonelagee. We hand railed the Glenmacnass river until we found a suitable spot to cross and then hand railed Lough Brook stream all the way up to the wonderful heart shaped Lough Ouler (Eagle Lake) my favourite Lough in Wicklow. At this point we looked at setting our maps by using features and then setting our maps by using the compass. We made our way up to the col above the lough just as it was getting dark and started working on night navigation.

• Direction – Compass bearing from A to B
• Distance – How much ground between A and B
• Duration – How long it should take walking from A to B
• Description – What the land is doing between A and B
• Destination – What the land should be doing when we arrive at B

Mountain Skills: John working on a compass bearing

Mountain Skills: The group making their way down the steep scree slopes safely

We then went on to cover risk management which requires a lot of personal judgement calls over a variety of terrains. I measure Likelihood and consequences on a scale of 1-5

1 = Minor consequences or very unlikely to result in a fall

5 = Very severe consequences are very probable

Throughout the walk we looked at personal skills, spotting, route choice, objective hazards, group movement/management, types of terrain and descent/ascent on steep ground. Total time on the hill was five hours.