Abseiling/Rope Work

A rather pleasant day was spent at the hall looking at procedures for tying onto a rope without a harness and the creating of anchors and belaying using only a sling and carabiner. These techniques are most at home in a true mountaineering environment where the use of a “confidence” rope allows for the safe guarding of short steep pitches of technical terrain. Following that we looked at the inclusion of working with a harness.

Winter Skills

Craig, Donald, Andy and, soon to be, new Assistant Explorer Leader Johnny headed out into the winter wilds of Killin one Saturday recently to start sharpening up their winter mountaineering skills as we put plans in place for a mountain skills based programme for Explorers.

With a good cover of snow on the ground the group covered the basics of step kicking, descent on steep snow and ice axe arrest before moving on to more advanced skills such as ice axe belays, abseiling off snow bollards, conquering cornices both in ascent and descent and avalanche procedures looking at probes and an eye opening exercise looking at the wonders of avalanche transceivers.