Page 14 - AMA Summer 2024

WINTER MOUNTAINEERING ›
JSMTC WINTER SKILLS CONCENTRATION
Neal Khepar
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this course, it is run each winter from JSMTW Ballachulish and can be bid for through the JSMTC course bookings page on Defence Connect. It is a 10-day
concentration with a travel day either end. Aimed at people who have at least Winter Mountain Foundation (WMF) or Winter Climbing Foundation (WCF), this course provides an opportunity to gain extra experience and logbook days that can be difficult to obtain on their own. As always, all equipment is provided and the instruction is excellent with a great mix of military and civilian instructors available to refresh your skills and guide you with planning routes in the West Highlands.
This concentration was undersubscribed due to the fairly warm winter we were having, but all those who cancelled certainly missed out! There was plenty of winter to be had, we just had to work a bit harder to find it. It also meant we had one instructor between two students, which was excellent as that gave us loads of flexibility with what we wanted to achieve.
I was part of the group that wanted extra winter QMDs and needed some instruction. Having completed WMF just before lockdown and not added any experience since, I was very glad of the expert instruction from Iain – a Mountain Rescue Team Leader – to refresh everything from the foundation course and build on it.
We started with a day of ‘skills refresh’ at the Glencoe ski resort – ice axe arrests, using crampons, moving safely etc. This was followed by some grudging days through hail and high winds, really earning those logbook days! Then on Friday we were blessed with a glorious day after a night of snow, so did a traverse of the Devil’s Ridge near Glen Nevis. A stunning route, which was really challenging and built our confidence massively, not to mention being an excellent morale boost!
Saturday was a much-needed rest day. 10 days of winter mountaineer- ing with one day rest is pretty challenging, so the bodies do need to be managed carefully throughout, and the instructor was very mindful of that.
In the second week, we continued to bag some really interesting QMDs, had another skills day that included bucket seats and ice-anchors and found some more grade-1 ground on the east ridge of Beinn a Chaorainn. The last day we decided to take it a little easy and did an introduction to winter climbing with some dry tooling, which was enough to whet our appetite for another hobby that I probably don’t have time for!
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