These people lost their camera SD card in Dorset recently. If you recognise them please drop me a line to give me their address and I'll send the card to them.

Contact me at:

steve@mltuk.org

22nd November: Another Board meeting.! They come up thick and fast this time of year. A highly productive but tiring meeting (9 hours!) A report will follow in due course but I have my work cut out to write the minutes! This was John Cousins' first MLT Board meeting since leaving MLT to work at Plas y Brenin. I should think he found it interesting...

18th November: This month has been so productive its hard to even begin to put digital pen to screen to try to describe it. Lately I've been preparing the papers for this weekend's coming meeting at Bendrigg (so look out for us in town at Kendal on Saturday!) Progress on all fronts including web site design (watch this space!!!), database development for radical new approach to keeping in contact with registrants and award holders, development of the CPD concept for MLTA, oh yes, the Conference which was probably the best received yet of these annual events, and work towards building up several working parties with some extremely competetent volunteers already coming forward. Today I joined a team from MLTE and MLTW with guest advisor Ian Fenton for the first of the Climbing Wall Leader Award briefing sessions, hosted admirably by the Manchester Climbing Centre.This was an exciting and challenging event, giving both ourselves and (hopefully!) the delegates plenty to think about. Nobody is under any illusions about the importance of pitching this scheme at the right level. Teaching lead climbing is a serious business and should only be provided by highly experienced climbers with masses of experience of teaching on climbing walls.

15th November: Last week was incredibly tiring but rewarding. I attended a series of meetings in Delhi within a very short but productive week (8am till 2am every day!), in which we radically overhauled the UIAA Training Standards Working Group, as well as conducted the 6-monthly meeting of the Mountaineering Commission. We were joined for a day by the Petzl Foundation,which is hoping to extend a successful pilot training programme from Nepal into India.Once this is self-sustaining the Indian Mountaineering Foundation will apply for the Training Standard from the UIAA. At the AGM of the IMF we heard a rousing speech by the Minister for Sport and Youth, a very literate mountaineer named Dr. Gill. This challenged the prevailing obsession with Everest and cahllenge Indian mountaineers to emulate UK climbers (his words not mine!) and attempt increasingly difficult objectives in a lightweight Alpine style. At the other end of the spectrum the IMF is also supporting the construction of many climbing walls throughout the country and is intending to build an infra-structure of route-setters and coaches as well as to enter Asian and international climbing competitions. It was fascinating to witness a paradigm shift in action.

21st October: Managed to get over to Nantmor this evening to complete another line that we spotted at the weekend. Sion pulled out the stops for his first new route on the sharp end: "Hong Kong Phooey" VS 4c. Lovely in the evening sun.

19th October: Friday was the Mountain Training Trust Board meeting. Not many people have head about MTT, but it is the charity tht runs Plas y Brenin on behalf of Sport England. MLTE, MLT and the BMC are partners in the Trust, which must be one of the most successful and influential "not for profit" charities in the UK. The meeting was followed by a strategic planning meeting to look at piorities for the coming years. On Friday night the Anglesey Adventure Club was joined by a new volunteer - Nick Royale - Nick is the first person with progresssive cerebral palsy to pass the Climbing Wall Award. The session ended with an interesting demo and question and answer from Nick. He intends to work towards SPA and WGL next! On Saturday my son Sion and I made use of the perfect weather to check more lines in the Nantmor area for the CC guidebook. I spotted a great new line which we climbed "ground up" (no abseil inspection) and weighed in at E5 6b. Elsewhere on the crag we also straightened out an existing line.

12th October: Just back from the Mountaineering Ireland annual gathering at Dingle. The main event for MLT was attendence at the half-yearly Mountaineering Coordination Meeting, which agreed to progress work on the proposed coaching qualifications and set a deadline for a draft syllabus to be produced - by Christmas. The relationship between coaching, leading and instructing is still an area of some debate and misunderstanding: I've posted up an article by Mark Reeves that addresses some of the issues. Nick Colton and I entered the Ireland climbing competition while we were there. A little too late I realised that I was up against some pretty stiff competition, namely a very steep wall with very small and slopey holds. Good fun if you like being spanked! I think I am ranked number 11 in Ireland now! Moveover, I came 3rd in the veterans class, not bad except there weren't many veterans - well, 3 in fact. We also sampled a fair amount of Guinness, live music and a great slideshow about Baffin Island.

6th October:The BMC student safety weekend was a great success. I joined Mal Creasey and Jon Garside plus several volunteer helpers to take students out for practical sessions on the Sunday. I worked with Jake and Phil, both keen climbers and was able to make use of my knowledge of esoteric gems at Tremadog (thanks to the CC guidebook work) to escape the crowds on Pant Ifan. Nipped out to Pen Trwyn lasat night after work but either the holds were greasy or my fingers were weak. Either way I notched up enough air time to earn a free flight to Shannon. Which is where I'll be going on Friday for a Mountaineering Coordination Group meeting. This is where the BMC, MCofS and MI get together and discuss common issues and approaches. Its a really valuable opportunity and MLT is lucky to be a member of this group.

The new edition of the highly infuential National Guidelines is currently undergoing final proof reading and will be published on this website next week (on 15th October) - watch this space!Sure enough its there now.

1st October: Emails are working again, a though the push email to my phone isn't - so I'm not picking up messages "on the road". Keep them flooding in! and do bear with us while we work through the backlog of communications.

29th September: Unfortunately our email services have been down for 4 days now since the promised "seamless" transition from one ISP to another for Broadband was very far from seamless! Despite rigorous questioning it would appear that our staff had a much better understanding of the potentiaI IT problems than BT. So please bear with us if you are trying to contact us by email (you can always use the MLTA forum to communicate with us). We are working hard to try to resolve the issue and get our email services working again.

24th September: "Twitter" followers will have noticed a bit of climbing activity lately: Gogarth, Dow and Cloggy as the "Indian Summer" sets in.I'll post up some photos from the Mourne Mountains; I was able to climb with Bryn Williams the new MLTW officer and Martin Skinner the new MLTW Chair, after the MLT Board Meeting of September 19th. This was an important meeting, and I'll be posting a summary ASAP. (I've been writing up the draft Minutes this week). The UIAA has a series of meetings coming up; we'll be taking the International Training Standards forward in early November. With luck the long-running negotiations over a mountain code will finally end in agreement; it seems we've dropped our preferred title as part of the workable compromise. It's not like we need the name to be a snappy branding thing.

11th September: Lots of progress in the office lately, with exciting proposals about MLTA, and most of the papers prepared for the Board meeting next weekend. After a long Executive meeting last night, I've earned an afternoon off, so I wil pick Sion up from school and head over to grab a route on Gogarth's Red Walls - sunshine at last!

9th September: A long day yesterday: I travelled by train to a give a presentation and particiapte in an advisory meeting about Standards for Adventure Leadership, hosted by Sports Leader UK (who administer the BEL) in partnership with SkillsActive. The standards are pitched below the entry level for our awards but are of significant interest to us as we currently don't have any way to recognise any of this learning except as part of a formal full exemption from training process. An unexpected discovery for me was how much our view of coaching and leadership had in common with badminton in particular. I've always seen the links between "adventure" pastimes as obvious but it was interesting to see how much we have in common with traditional sports as well. Met Dave Turnbull the BMC's CEO as well as the future Access and Conservation Officer for Wales, Elfyn Jones this morning. Hoping to grab a route this evening with Martin Doyle from Plas y Brenin to make the most of some sunshine at last.

7th September: I'm half way through a whole series of meetings: on Friday the officers from most of the home nation boards met to swap notes and to reach agreement on various issues. We also had a publications meeting, where several ongoing and future projects were discussed. The forthcoming International Mountain Trekking book is well underway. At the weekend I travelled up to Glenmore Lodge for the Mountaineering Council of Scotland AGM. This was a great day, with sessions ranging from working with SARDA dogs to Dave MacLeod's climbing masterclass. Dave also gave an excellent and though-provoking lecture on Saturday night, all the more impressive because he and his wife Claire had narrowly escaped serious injury in a traumatic car crash on the journey east. The basic theme was a reflection upon where the real joy lies in working on a project, with the basic premise being that success is an anti-climax, the best bit is when it becomes apparent that the seemingly impossible may actually be possible. I can confirm that this is generally true of climbs (but not always, sometimes the ascent feels perfect and the moment of topping-out doesn't feel like an anti-climax - this is why I love on-sighting because this feeling is relatively common...) but it also made me think about my job. A lot of seemingly impossible negotiations are showing signs of being achievable, proving again the importance of persistence and also, as Bob Dylan once sang "There's no success like failure" if we are open to taking it as an opportunity to learn.

9th August: another one of my occasional blogs for geeks. There are some handy little free applications around that can be quite useful. Here's one I rather like; multi-map make a little add-on for Outlook, that adds a map of your contact's addresses. Its all done automatically for you once you've created a contact,and shows both business and home addresses if these are different.

Another add-on that I find indispensible is Xobni: this manages all your emails instantaneously which means you can find all correspondence with anybody no matter what folder you've stored it in. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that Xobni doesn't work properly with server versions of Outlook.

Here's a good link for Outlook add-ins: http://www.slipstick.com/addins/contacts.asp Finally, if you find duplicate entries in Outlook is cluttering up your system, there is a free solution, Branded as "prayerware" (like shareware but you're supposed to send a prayer - this software was produced by a religious leader) is called Outlook duplicate remover 5 (snappy eh? and it works) Here's a link:http://www.slipstick.com/files/ODR5.EXE

With dodgy weather inland I decided to revisit "the Gallery", a bolted diorite crag near Llandudno. My original impression had not been favourable, but this time I came away very impressed. You need to view the place as a bit of an adventure, as a lot of the climbing is steep and the holds look somewhat detached. Moreover much of the steep rock is caked in what looks like mud! If you view the muddy bits as unused and take a deep breath you can (usually) find the right holds! 7a+ here definitely feels more like trad E5!

We climbed 6 routes, all between 25 and 30 metres long and ranging in quality from good to brilliant. We also made what was possibly the first repeat of the memorable "Iskra" (Russian for "spark") and with guidance from Colin Struthers, who originally developed the crag and coincidentally was making a repeat visit, we replaced the top anchors with lower-off fittings. An utterly brilliant afternoon. My arms ache now!

5th August: The book launch at the Eisteddfod was a total success. Get your copy before we run out of stock - limited edition! Available from our web shop and all good bookshops in Wales.

29th June: Grabbed a few routes at Llandulas Cave this everning: the crag has been cleaned qutie a bit recently and has some surprisingly good additions. I thought "Mind Light" was one of the best routes for its grade in the area (6a+) Sion led it cleanly on sight, another proud moment for dad coach. Or pushy parent, depeNding on how you view these things.

28th June: I spent an enjoyable sunny day teaching navigation skills to Trail for Sale auction winner Graham Brown. We went through the whole range of good and bad visibility techniques on a circuit around Moel Elio above Llanberis. This was a day that put the work of MLT back in context for me. We are so lucky to be able to work in the places we love, and its a privelege to be able to help others to achieve the same thin, whether for paid or for voluntary work.

27th June: For Sions' birthday we took a group of friends to the Ropes and Ladders high ropes course in Llanberis. It was interesting also to see this from a professional point of view. Designed by Crispin Waddy, a few of the elements are built with climbing activities in mind. In the evening I went cragging with my old friend Chris Forrest, who now works as the Chief Instructor for the Joint Sevices at Indefatigable. (I can't quite remember exactly what his title is, but he certainly has a strong team to work with).

13th June: After an evening meeting with Pat Littlejohn, Alan Blakshaw, Audrey Seguy and Doug Scott to discuss the implications of coaching for traditional mountaineering values, we joined the Lakes climbing festival in the back end of beyond, aka Seathwaite. Once the sun fought its way through the mist we nipped out to the fast-drying Stonestar crag; probably the busiest this crag has ever been! I climbed with Pat Littlejohn for the afternoon on a bunch of pleasant pitches from E1 to E4. At one point Pat called out "Good lead, Steve" - high praise!

17th June: Lots of interesting bits of work this month. We have received the proofs for "Mynydda" - the Welsh langauge version of Hillwalking, so its almost ready for publishing now. The BMC access and conservation officer has been appointed and will start work in September. I made a moderation visit to an MIA assessment course at the beginning of the month and was impressed by the standard. On 12th June I attended a meeting in Kendal to explain the rationale behind the coaching qualifications to a group of distinguished mountaineers and climbers from the BMC, followed by an afternoon's climbing in the Duddon Valley. A reasonable amount of cragging in my free time, with a range of routes from VS to E5 and 7a+. The latter half of this week will be taken up by meetings of the MTT Board, which manages Plas y Brenin. The MLTA post has received considerable interest, and we will be looking at the applications this week.The woodpeckers have continued to visit my feeding station and I have more photos than I know what to do with! Lots of interest in the UIAA Training Standards as well.

27th May: Wildlife has always fascinated me and my teenage years were mostly spent at bird reserves, when my schoolmates were hanging out at the local chippy and Spar. One of my great favourites is the woodpecker family, and I've been coaxing them into our garden over the last few years, despite a major setback when I was outvoted on the family pet and we ended up with a cat - in fact two cats! This feeder is about 3 metres from my kitchen window, so I've now got more photos of Greater Spotted Woodpeckers than I know what to do with! I've been out cragging a bit lately as well, routes including "Simulator", "Mistaken Identity", "Assassin" at Gogarth, "That's what friends R4" and "Easter Wall" in the Moelwyns, and "NIght Glue" and "Crunchy Toad" at Pen Trwyn.

20th May: My "blog" has been down for a while lately, in case you've been wondering why there was a big gap. It's full steam ahead now though! One change will be that there will be more updates on the inside workings of Mountain Leader Training as well as all the fun and adventures. One of the exciting recent developments is that work on a Welsh language version of "Hillwalking" is well underway and we should have this published by the early autumn. As a resident of Snowdonia for over 20 years I am proud to see this project approaching completion. I'm also proud to have been involved in some of the projects that the local climbers and walkers have tackled in this area with the support and leadership of BMC Cymru. This looks set to gather even more impetus once the Wales access and conservation officer is appointed (see http://www.mltuk.org/docs/height-news.html for more information). Yesterday I was climbing at PenTrwyn and completed a few great lines (including the mega-classic Night Glue) whilst Pete Harrison worked all day unpaid and unacknowledged cleaning up Lower Pen Trwyn; work he has been undertaking on our behalf over several weeks.. A fantastic and very professional effort which deserves recognition even from climbers who have no interest in sports climbing.

29th April: I've been resting from a damaged tendon, tweaked it doing the first repeat of the rather fingery "Wow Factor" at Craig y Gesail. I tested it out last night on "Central Sadness" with Rachael Hinchliffe from the MLTA. A cold wind was whistling through Llanberis, the harbinger of a day's rain so California Quarry seemed the best option as its sheltered from the wind. Forgot about the two fingered pull at ankle-breaking height! We topped out shortly before the rain arrived.

8th April: The UIAA Mountaineering Commission meeting had a receord turn out, including vistors from the USA, Japan, Russia and Chile. Afterwards I spent a week ski touring with other delegates, including a mass descent of the Vallee Blanche!

March 200

31st March: This has been a distinctly unglamorous month, but masses of work done behind the scenes coordinating a series of projects. MLTA continues to develop and is well on the way to fulfilling its potential. If you're not a member, check it out - it's the single most important development in CPD for mountain leader training in the history of our awards. Much of the month has been spent writing a business/strategic plan, coordinating a spring edition of the scheme providers' newletter, managing the translation of "Hillwalking" into Welsh, and examining ways that we can be more effective and communicate better. Just one sentence but a lot of complex issues!

The proposed development of a coaching qualifications structure has provoked considerable interest from some stalwart mountaineers who quite rightly fear the dilution of our traditional values if the "Educationalists" try to label and control our anarchic pastime. Since Mountain Leader Training occupies prime ground in the educational camp I find myself increasingly bemused by this label which seems to imply that traditional values can't be reconciled with education: I can only surmise that some people suffered some unhappy times at school! There will be a healthy debate about this balance at the BMC AGM and I strongly advise you to come along and either support us or point out the errors of our ways - either way we are willing to listen and learn! I will also be posting up some personal reflections about coaching, mentoring and - heaven forbid! competition in traditional climbing. Watch this space!

7th March: The Board Meeting at Glenmore Lodge was a great success, with several important resolutions passed and it represented a step closer towards a simpler interface between all the home nation boards. Follow this link to a summary of the Board minutes. After the meeting 4 of us trekked into Coire nan Lochan, but I have to admit that I didn't do my homework, and we found the approach slopes too unstable. Coupled with driving hail the journey home seemed a better option, until that is we found ourselves in a huge traffic jam on the A9 caused by a pile-up. Eventually we traversed the country and headed south via Fort William, so 3 hours after leaving Aviemore we were further away from home than when we started!

12th February: Today we finally managed to complete the third of Chris Parkin's trilogy of lines based on the best summer routes on the Black Ladders. He thinks this has the hardest pitch of the lot - it's the one we fell from on Saturday. No such problems this time, although the crag started thawing from about 10.00 and carried on getting warmer all day. By the time we approached the summit rim we were dripping wet. The crux involves an exciting span out left to a torqued hammer (clue: not the axe...), a delicate step through and then some long reaches on full lock-offs. We've graded at VI, 8. The approach and finish were also quite spicy, especially as most of the turf had thawed on the long final groove.

11th February: Well, there was a lot to be done in the office this week as we have a Board meeting coming up with a lot of important issues to be discussed. We have made a lot of progress in so many areas this winter so ther's a lot to debate, including the success of MLTA, which is starting to take its place as the premiere CPD opportunity for our award holders (particularly ML, WGL, CWA and SPA -see the links above - Training Schemes - for further details of the awards). We have best-selling author Libby Peter working for us at the moment to help me cope with the additional workload that we are currently experiencing. Meanwhile my good friend and climbing partner Baggy Richards has continued to storm the crags - he's either cashing in some lieu time or is in for a rocketing! - but who cares? when the ice is this good the boys and girls have gotta play! I've waited 20 years for a season like this, so tomorrow its back up for another crack at our line. Thank goodness, so far it's a clear night, so we are in with a chance. I've actually taken the unprecedented step of sharpening my tools - must be catching on to the modern idiom. Today was so mild that the icefalls in Llanberis Pass had collapsed, so we need a night like this. Fingers crossed - I don't want to beat our air time from Saturday.

9th February: Chris Parkin and I climbed Western Gully today, taking in the Direct Finish for good measure. It deserves its classic status for the rock architecture and sustained nature. Well worth the wait - I last tried it in 1985 but decided to wait until it was properly iced up - I've waited ever since! We saw Ian Parnell and Baggy Richards completing what appeared to be the first repeat of the hardest of Chris's contributions to the crag to date- it will be interesting to see what they made of it.

7th February: Welsh winter is back! The conditions are the best in 20 years, although temperatures are hovering on the edge of a thaw. All the main crags are coming into condition though - let's hope it lasts a bit longer. Chris Parkin and I had a crack at finishing a line we tried about 15 years ago. It was as hard as we remembered but it's definitely possible. We baled after both of us had taken a 20' head-first lob from the final hard move. Shame really, but we'll be back!

31st January: The month ended in fine style with the Association of Mountaneering Instructors (AMI) AGM and annual conference. Jon Garside, Malcolm Creasey and I travelled up for a meeting on Friday with legendary mountaineer Allen Fyffe at Glenmore Lodge, and then stayed on for the AGM. We renewed many old aquaintances and stayed up late into the night enjoying the local beers and whiskeys. A fantastically successful foray to the north, with a perfect blend of work and pleasure. Jon and I worked off raging hangovers with a quick journey up the mega-classic mixed climb "The Message" (IV, 6) on the Mess of Pottage crag, amazingly sheltered for a day when 120mph winds were recorded on Cairngorm summit. I must admit it was pretty breezy at the top of the climb! The weekend also gave us the opportunity to chat to the new AMI committee, conduct straw polls with the AMI members, and discuss some joint marketing initiatives with the new management staff at Glenmore Lodge, as well as update AMI with the ongoing work concerning coaching, the forthcoming Climbing Wall Leading Award, and the review of the Mountaineering Instructors Award that I am about to kick-start with a stakeholders' survey.

19th January: So far this year has been all work, not much play! Behind the scenes we have been working on a lot of exciting projects, which I am confident have set Mountain Leader Training in position to develop very strongly in 2009. We have also made funding bids and changes that will enormously strengthen our ability to deliver an exciting and innovative programme of courses and workshops. Watch this space for career opportunities and regular newsletters! At home I've been rebuilding my office over the Christmas break and the evenings and weekends that followed. I've been climbing with my son a few times and last night I managed my first ever V6 boulder problem, so working on my weak area (definitely bouldering!) is starting to pay dividends. I intend to put a few top tips on this in the MLTA website shortly. V6 is not particularly hard but if you are incapable of slapping for holds its hard to do statically - so this represents a breakthrough in trying to develop a more modern, fluid movement style.

We went bouldering with Owen Hayward, the Chair of MLTW somewhere around New Year. Here we are at Porth Ysgo, Lleyn - note Owen pulling my shoulder and removing the mat simultaneously - the cad!:

28th December: We went down to my sister's house in Bishop's Stortford for a a family Christmas but today we were back in Wales with blue skies! Sion and I nipped out to the slate quarries to catch the afternoon sun. Unfortunately a bitter wind was howling, but we found shelter in California Quarry, a hidden slate hole beyond Blue Peris.The back walls were bathed in sun, so as a perfect finale for the year, we tackled Chris Parkin's immaculate "Waves of Inspiration"(E5 6a). I couldn't feel my feet at first but it worked out alright in the end. I think it was our first route for about a month, so we were very pleased with ourselves! Brilliant climbing and a perfect (but Baltic!) sunset. Appropriately we went over to Chris' house for supper.