This weekend saw Davie up in the Ben Lawers group with the SMRT for some winter training.
Our training was delivered by Stuart Johnston who is team leader of Tayside MRT and Training Officer for Mountain Rescue Council of Scotland - so he knows his stuff.
Day 1 looked at security on steep ground and movement in snow. We spent a lot of time cutting steps, boot work, crampon work and finally using your axe to arrest.
At night we had a pre-brief and lecture on rigging and how to set up lowers and raises in winter conditions, and Stuart took us through the training programme given to Scottish teams. Following this we were briefed on avalanche procedures to support team movement and also avalanche SAR techniques.
Day 2 saw us put this stuff into practice up in a gorgeous corrie. Temperatures were around -10 to -15 and the snow was in good condition. We spent a good amount of time digging Rutsch blocks and quick pits to check snow condition and how prone things were to avalanche. We used avalanche kits to determine snow constitution and consolidation and backed these up with the tests described.
The fact that 6 people have lost their lives this year to avalanches, both in the Lakes and in Scotland brings home the importance of taking precautions. The fact that avalanches were reported on Ingleborough the week that Speirsy and I had aborted shows that it's not just the usual hotspots that are to blame either.
We then moved on to rigging for winter lowering and raising and spent a fair amount of time digging and placing anchors and setting up belays.
All in all a fantastic weekend with a great bunch of guys and I left with two key actions:
1. Get my Winter ML booked in
2. Get back up the Cairngorms with Ginger asap.
Davie
