The start of year 2 mountain leadership modules, and I guess my main aim is to have fun! I figure if I'm having fun then it means that everyone else is more likely to be having having fun... right? Which I think is a key quality to have as an instructor. If you’re miserable then it’s more than likely that everyone else will be, so keep the spirits up and say goodbye to Hyde and hello to Jekyll who will be your instructor for today.
So some more aims and objectives:
I know that however skilled or experienced I am there will always be plenty more to learn! and there’s going to be plenty of new stuff being crammed into my cranium this year, just need to focus and make sure
I’m soaking it up and remembering it, and putting it to practice regularly so that these new skills don’t become rusty and forgotten, and let’s face it it’s not hard to forget stuff when your brain cells are fighting a losing battle against alcohol, maybe this should be another aim don’t drink so much this year, especially on ML trips.
Right so let’s get down to the critical stuff, the skills I need to brush up on, I have spent some time in the mountains this summer, but have mainly chosen bright sunny clear days where navigating has been fairly straight forward and easy, so I need to get the compass out and bare the dark, dingey, damp weather to put my navigating to the test and challenge myself.
Something I don’t know much about is aspect of slope, so I aim to learn about this as it could be a useful skill for leading on the mountains.
Something else I could do with improving is estimating distance by sight, instead of “it’s over there a bit, will be there dreckly”.
Most of all I will be learning a lot about leading groups this year, it won’t be easy sometimes but it’s all part of learning and I need to remember that and carry on regardless to how much I might just want to shout at my group and run off into the wilderness and live in a cave.
