Mountain Leader Training Course

Mountain Leader course

Who is the Mountain Leader Course for?

The Mountain Leader (ML) Award is for those who wish to lead others in the mountains and hills of Ireland and the UK.

It is designed to promote the safe enjoyment of the mountains and provides instruction in the skills required for those who wish to lead groups.

Rock climbing and leading groups in winter (Snow/Ice) conditions are not covered by the ML.

Night Navigation

To register you must:

 

Wicklow Mountain leader

Duration:

The course runs over 5 days but can be split into two chunks and completed over a number of weeks.

  • ML1: 3 days, including at least one evening of night navigation
  • ML2: 2 days, including an overnight wild camp

Cost:

The course costs €400 per person.

(ML1 €200) (ML2 €180)

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this post or other skills or awards.

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Abseiling: Cows-Tail, Lanyard or clip in direct?

There are pros and cons in every aspect and system of climbing and abseiling. Ultimately, it is up to you to understand what these are and decide for yourself which you would like to use.

In the case of a trainee RCI instructor, we should understand all the systems and use the best systems where possible. Don’t just use one method because you were told it was the best, decide for yourself and be prepared to confidently back up your decisions with solid reasoning.

Good Practice for Abseiling

When abseiling, its good practice to extend your belay plate away from your harness using a sling.

Extending your belay plate

Mainly this is to prevent your back up prusik being too close to your belay/abseil device and getting trapped or worse, held open.

Which Sling to use for Abseiling?

Slings for abseiling

First and foremost, whatever sling material we use, we need to operate with extreme levels of care to ensure we don’t subject the extension to a shock loading.

I have used all 3 for extending. All types of work and all are safe when loaded statically, once you don’t subject them to a shock loading.

However, of the three options, Dyneema is most likely to break when shock loaded as it has no capacity to stretch, then Nylon, then Aramid.

With that in mind I normally use Aramid as my first choice for extending, but if you don’t have an Aramid sling, opt for Nylon, just remember the golden rule. Never shock load your slings.

Where should I connect the sling?

Just like when we tie in with the rope, put the sling around the tie in loops and not just the harness loop.

Connecting the sling to harness

How should I connect it?

There are three common methods.

How to connect a sling to a harness

Method A is the quickest and strongest as it doesn’t tie a knot in the sling, but there is a greater risk of not clipping both ends of the sling, which would be catastrophic.

Method B gives you the option of different clip in spots due to the isolation knot(s). A further carabiner could be added to the end, which would be useful for safety on multi-pitch abseils. The girth hitch weakens a sling by up to 50%.

Method C is stronger than B and has the added bonus of allowing you to clip into any one of 4 loops and still be safe to use. Its a bit cumbersome, however.

Knots weaken slings

While knots are known to dramatically lessen the strength of a sling, let’s be realistic, as long as you never shock load the sling you won’t create a force big enough to snap it.

We exercise great caution every day when near cliff edges or when belaying climbers. So long as we treat our extended sling with the same caution and care then all of the above methods are safe.

Should I use a Prusik for back up?

With the above systems, Yes, absolutely. If I was using a gri-gri, no.

Prusik on a leg loop?

Most climbers, including myself, sometimes abseil with their device attached directly to their harness loop and the prusik loop attached to one of the legs of their harness.

The main pro is it’s quick and you don’t have to consider shock loading a sling, but the main cons are that harness leg loops aren’t designed to be loaded in this way and the prusik can get too close to the device this way.

I would expect an RCI trainee to understand, demonstrate and explain the pros and cons of all the above methods.

Purpose designed lanyards?

I have purposely not mentioned lanyards such as the Petzl Connect. While they are dynamic and designed to absorb a shock loading, I have the following personal opinions or observations on them:

  • In the realms of trad climbing, I find them annoying and they can get in the way while reaching for gear on lead.
  • They have a singular purpose, whereas a sling has a few purposes which allow me to carry fewer items on my harness.
  • I think climbers should be able to use and be comfortable with using a sling to extend a belay plate.
  • If my work routinely called for a cows tails, such as regularly operating a group abseil set up, I would use a purpose-designed lanyard.
  • I think purpose-designed lanyards are an excellent choice for sports climbing.

If you decide to use a purpose-designed lanyard, you should still be familiar with making your own from a sling, in case you lose or forget it.

Remember to always dress and stress your knots, put a knot at the end of your abseil rope and tie a stopper knot on anchor tie ins.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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RCI Set Ups: The Personal Abseil

There are two main setups we can use to rig a personal abseil. Both work, both are safe and it’s sometimes the crag we are at that determines which system we use.

Remember this is an abseil intended for instructor use only, at RCI level, these types of abseil are not for use by a client.

Setting up a Personal Abseil

Setup 1 for personal abseil
Set Up A

 

Setup 2 for personal abseil
Set Up B

Below are basic step by step instructions that RCI trainees might find useful. This blog is designed to jog your memory rather than teach this set up from scratch, so if you are not experienced in the skills required to build this setup, please don’t attempt it without additional guidance.

Anchors for Personal Abseil

How many anchors should you put in any setup? As many as it takes for the set up to be safe.

That said, in general, a good system can be set up with 2 or 3 gear placed anchors. Just make sure they are 100% bomber.

Set up A

Setup 1 for personal abseil

In this setup, we bring our rope strands together to form an equalised master point away from the cliff edge, much like our top rope system. We then measure out exactly how much rope we need to abseil to the bottom of the cliff and connect this rope to the master point with a locking carabiner.

The benefits of this system are that we don’t have a lot of rope lying around the bottom of the crag, getting walked on or dirtied. Its also less bouncy (the more strands in a setup, the less movement).

The downside is that it uses more rope in the system, especially if the anchors are far away from the cliff edge. It also uses more gear than set up B and is a little slower to set up.

If I was working at a short crag like Ballyryan or the lower end of Ailladie, and I had a 50m abseil rope with me, then I would use this system.

Always remember to put a knot at the end of the abseil line, it’s a good habit to get into, especially if you can’t fully see the end of rope touch the ground. For example, near the Ghost slab in Dalkey is a common area for instructors to set up abseils and the last metre or so is out of sight from the top.

Set Up B

Setup 2 for personal abseil

By tying an overhand knot on a large bight of rope, we can connect the anchors quickly and simply, to set up a personal abseil.

This also uses up less gear. In fact, if you have good quality threads at the top of the crag, like in Ballyryan, this set up can be made entirely from the rope, using no slings, nuts or carabiners. If you haven’t practised this already, it’s worth doing so for development, just don’t try it for the first time on your assessment!

The main disadvantage is that we throw all our static cable over the edge. This could lead to our slack rope on the bottom of the crag getting damaged, dirtied or in the way of other crag users.

We could prevent this by building our system “backwards”, finishing our system somewhere in the middle of the rope, but this would possibly be more time consuming and frustrating as it would be trickier to adjust when finished.

I would be more inclined to use set up B at a crag like The Prow at Fairhead, where I’ll need every inch of my abseil rope to get to the bottom of the crag.

Cows-tail or lanyard?

How we connect ourselves to the abseil rope is worth a separate blog entry in itself, and luckily for you, I’ve already written it.

Remember to always dress and stress your knots, put a knot at the end of your abseil rope and tie a stopper knot on anchor tie ins.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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RCI Set Ups: The Bottom Rope

As an RCI, a Bottom Rope is probably what you will spend most of your time setting up.

The set up should be tidy, easily adjustable simple to understand and 100% bombproof.

Setting up your Bottom Rope

Two anchor setup for bottom rope

Below are the basic step by step instructions that RCI trainees might find useful. This blog is designed to jog your memory rather than teach this set up from scratch, so if you are not experienced in the skills required to build this setup, please don’t attempt it without additional guidance.

Anchors

How many anchors should you put in a bottom rope set up? As many as it takes for the set up to be safe.

That said, in general, a good system can be set up with 2 or 3 gear placed anchors. Just make sure they are 100% bomber.

Anchors for bottom rope

If you are putting in a lot more anchors than that you either don’t trust your placements or are climbing at an area of questionable rock quality. Oughtdara or Murroughkilly for example.

Rope Selection for a Bottom Rope

You should use a static rope for the anchor and a dynamic rope for the climbing rope.

Rope Strands

However many anchors you use for a bottom rope, in my opinion, you should do everything to make sure you only have one bight of rope draped over the cliff edge.

Having two bights of rope uses a lot more rope and is much tougher and time-consuming to equalise. It also just looks wrong.

How much of a bight to leave over the edge will take some practice, you don’t want too much of your system over the edge as it shortens the climb, whereas too little compromises the system’s safety.

Isolation Knots

You should aim to include an isolation knot (Fig 8 on the bight) in your set up. It makes equalising easier, helps keep the rope protector in place and can be a handy clip in spot for personal safety if needed.

Isolation knot

Rope Protector

Use a rope protector. Its best practice and there is no reason not to.

Using a rope protector

Carabiners

Use two symmetrical pear-shaped crabs of the same size and design. Go back to back or gates on the same side, it really doesn’t matter as both are safe. Just make sure they are locked and orientated correctly.

Carabiners for bottom rope

Before Using your Bottom Rope

Once you have built your system and are happy with it, be sure to take all the stretch out of the system from the bottom of the route by pulling/weighting the dynamic rope as much as possible.

This will make for a more comfortable and safer lower off for the first climber to use it and could highlight any potential major mistakes before a client ties on.

Remember to always dress and stress your knots and tie a stopper knot.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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RCI Set ups: The Group Abseil

The group abseil is one of the more complex setups shown on the RCI training. Sometimes this leads to confusion with some elements of the setup.

Group Abseil setup

Below are the basic step by step instructions that RCI trainees might find useful. This blog is designed to jog your memory rather than teach this set up from scratch, so if you are not experienced in the skills required to build this setup, do not attempt it without additional guidance.

Group Abseil Anchors

Every crag top is unique, but working on the assumption that you are placing gear for your anchors, you will need a minimum of 3 anchor points for a group abseil.

There will always be exceptions, but for the purposes of this let’s work off 3 placed anchors.

Three Loops

Working off three anchors, it’s quite easy to have 3 loops coming out of your large fig 8 knot (BFK). The common mistake I see made here is that the last strand of rope isn’t included in the BFK when its tied, which can be extremely dangerous as it just pulls through the BFK when weighted.

See the pictures below. If the last strand of rope isn’t coming out of the back of the BFK then it’s not tied properly.

Large Figure of 8 knot for group abseil

Cows Tail, Saftey rope, Abseil Rope

If we’re aiming to deliberately create 3 loops, logic would suggest we must have a use for each loop.

  • For your safety, connect your harness to an outside loop by a cows tail and crab or purpose-designed lanyard.
  • connect the dynamic safety rope to the middle loop using a tied off Italian hitch.
  • connect a separate static abseil line to the last loop via a tied off Italian Hitch, so that it can be completely releasable from the anchor.
Three-loop anchorpoint

Positioning & Final Set up

Take the time to think ahead when setting up. The final picture should be clean, organised and easy to understand what each part is doing in the setup.

  • We shouldn’t have any trip hazards for our clients to navigate around and be set up in a way that they can easily approach.
  • The set up should be an appropriate distance from the edge of the cliff, to allow clients clip in, while still being safe and to allow them time to get used to the process of moving backwards.
  • If we use different coloured carabiners and figure of 8s we can refer to them by colour rather than by use, which makes it easier to instruct our clients when they reach the bottom.
Group Abseil setup

Practice your group abseil

The pictures and instructions above give a good basic example of a safe and tidy set up. While there are many tweaks and adjustments that can be made to improve its use, I have kept the set up as simple as possible.

Once you are comfortable with the basics and have practised working a group abseil for real, then these tweaks should be obvious to you or indeed feel free to get in touch and we can discuss variations to the setup.

Remember to always dress and stress your knots and leave a long tail and/or tie a stopper knot.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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Skills Refresher: 3 more knots

Three more knots might be useful for those who already have an understanding of the basic knots, have been climbing a while or even trainee climbing instructors.

Three more knots and how to tie them

Learning more knots is never a bad thing, it’s always good to have these in your repertoire!

Italian Hitch (Munter Hitch)

Useful for belaying when you don’t have a belay plate or for lowering someone. It’s quick to tie and easy to know if you have gotten it wrong.

There is a distinctive flip of the knot around the carabiner if done correctly. It sometimes puts kinks or twists in ropes, however.

Alpine Butterfly

Useful for isolating a core short piece of rope or attaching two nearby anchors and is easily untied even if heavily weighted. There are two styles of tying this knot shown below.

Bunny’s Ears

Useful for when you would like two loops coming from your figure 8 on the bight instead of one. Perhaps when setting up a group abseil or a top rope set up.

Top Tips for Tying Knots

  • when trying to learn a new knot, keep a short length of rope beside the couch and practice tying them as you watch telly, so that tying the knot becomes second nature to you.
  • Remember to always dress and stress your knot and leave a long tail and/or tie a stopper knot.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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Types Of Carabiner

There are many different types of carabiner, all designed for different purposes. This can be confusing when starting to build your first climbing rack.

We might see many types on sale in a climbing shop, but for the most part, when rock climbing we use very few different types, especially as beginners.

This video should give you a basic understanding of the types of carabiner we need to start climbing. From clipping bolts or gear, building anchors or belaying.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this post or other skills and never forget, always lock your gates!

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5 Tips: Tying in to the rope

Tying in to the rope is probably the most important thing we do every time we climb. It is the essential connection point between our harness and the rope, if it fails we have little chance of avoiding injury or worse.

Before we start, let’s look at a video of tying in to the rope with a re-threaded figure of 8.

5 tips for tying in to the Rope

Use a re-threaded figure of 8

While there are other knots to tie in with, such as the bowline, my preference for instructing climbers and for my own personal climbing will always be the re-threaded figure of 8. There are many reasons why I prefer it, but mainly it’s because:

  • Even a poorly or incorrectly tied figure 8 with a stopper knot could still hold long enough to work. However, a poorly or incorrectly tied bowline will be way more likely to fail.
  • It’s easier to tell from a distance or buddy check whether it’s tied correctly or not.

Proper tail length

While it’s important to have an appropriate tail leftover, too often climbers have an excessive amount of tail left. This looks sloppy, even if tied up into a big stopper knot.

Find a sweet spot that makes for the perfect amount of tail (approx 6-8 inches), which will allow you to add a small stopper knot. I measure along one outstretched arm to the inside of my armpit.

Never measure along two fully outstretched arms, which is the common mistake I see happening.

figure of 8 Tying in to the rope

Make a small loop

A large tie in loop looks sloppy, can get caught or snagged while climbing and can lead to belaying or hauling problems down the line if it stretches too much when loaded.

You should aim to copy the size of your harness loop when tying the rope loop. To do this, move your first fig 8 knot as close to the harness as possible, before re-threading.

bad figure of 8

Tie into both harness loops

Rather than tie into your central harness loop, tie into the waist and leg loops holding your harness loop in place.

Why be clipped into one loop, when you can be clipped into two? Its that simple.

A debate rages on whether to pass the rope through the top (waist loop) or bottom (legs loop) first. I understand both points of view, but I don’t teach a preference.

I teach people to always always be super vigilant when tying in, just make sure you go through both, again it’s that simple.

Tie in to Both harness loops

Concentrate fully and always buddy check

When tying in, ignore everything going on around you including your climbing partner. It is very easy to get distracted mid-way through tying in and not finish the job.

This may seem unlikely, but there are many recorded examples of this happening, even to professional climbers.

No matter who you are climbing with, always buddy check their knots and have them check yours. Sometimes we can feel awkward when doing this with more experienced climbers, but just think how awkward it’ll be if you forget and your partner has an accident.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this post or other skills and never forget to dress & stress knots thoroughly!

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Skills Refresher: 3 basic knots

These three basic knots are useful for those learning to scramble, rock climb or going on a mountaineering trip. Never assume you know them, it’s always good to recheck and relearn before you find yourself using them.

There’s a short video for each type of knot so read on to get back up to speed on your climbing knots!

Re-Threaded Figure of 8 (incl stopper knot)

This is my preferred knot for tying into the rope. It’s easy to learn, easy to tell if it’s tied correctly and perfect for teaching beginners. 

Figure of 8 on a Bight

Quicker to tie than the re-threaded fig 8 and useful for building anchors. Remember to always dress and stress your knot and leave a long tail and/or tie a stopper knot.

The Clove Hitch

Its simple to learn, used by all types of climbers from sports climbers to alpinists and easy to tell if its not a clove hitch. If it doesn’t lock, it’s not one.

Top Tips for tying basic knots

  • when trying to learn a new knot, keep a short length of rope beside the couch and practice tying them as you watch telly, so that tying the knot becomes second nature to you.
  • Remember to always dress and stress your knot and leave a long tail and/or tie a stopper knot.

Want to learn more basic knots?

I have a blog post with three more knots for you to learn or relearn! Even if you know them, it’s never a bad idea to go back over them!

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or other skills.

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Skills Refresher: Taking a compass bearing from the map

In poor visibility, thick fog or at night-time we sometimes use a map and compass to calculate the bearing we are going to walk along. Knowing how to take a compass bearing from the map is a key skill to have, just in case. 

This post could be a useful refresher for anyone who has done a Mountain Skills course or maybe hasn’t used their compass in a while.

If you haven’t used a compass before, or are unfamiliar with reading a map, then this post might not be for you. If you’d like to learn how to stay safe in the mountains, you might consider a 2-day Mountain Skills Course.

Knowing the parts of the compass

Firstly let’s look at this quick video to reacquaint ourselves with the parts of the compass we need to use.

Parts of the Compass

Now, let’s watch this video explaining how we can use those parts of the compass to take a bearing from the map.

Magnetic Variation

If you don’t understand magnetic variation and why we allow for it, if you don’t know your northings from your eastings or if any of the phrases used in the video are unfamiliar to you then the information in this video might not be of use to you just yet.

Tips on Taking a Compass Bearing From The Map

TOP TIP: try guessing what your bearing will be before you do the calculation. If your guesstimate is 90 or 180 degrees away from your calculation, we know we have made a mistake and can investigate why.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any aspect of this video or navigation training.

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