Page 40 - 2017 AMA Summer

Climbing Meets
Winter Meet 17
“...okay, no problems Sean. I’ll take on the Winter Meet.” First mistake... By Martin South
The Winter Meet is always a challenge to organise, but with Sean and Ryan’s help, we made a real effort to make sure that the Meet was a success. As getting enough winter instructors in both climbing and mountaineering can be difficult enough at the best of times, so as well as the support from winter-qualified Members, the Meet provided a civilian WML and two civilian MICs to ensure that the those who made the effort to get to Aviemore received quality winter training. The interest in the Winter Meet was high this year, across a wide rank–range, as well as with Regular and Reserve Members. Trying to square the circle of meeting everyone’s training aspirations for the week fell to me, and hopefully it worked (...ish).
Everyone arrived on the Saturday, and the prize for the most crazy and/or eco- logically-responsible transport definitely went to Geordie Taylor for turning up at Rothiemurchus on his Brompton bike. Stubborn to the last, he even refused a lift from Aviemore train station and frantically pedalled from town all the way to the Lodge. A superb effort. But nuts. The rest of the Members arrived in more con- ventional transport, and settled-in for a cracking week’s winter mountaineering. Apart from one problem. There wasn’t any snow. It could have been July if you looked SW from the Lodge. Beautiful, but not very winter mountaineering-y. Undeterred, the search for snow (and maybe some ice) was on.
First day on the mountain, Guy Davies, Ben Turner and Ben Powell went out as a group and worked on their skills and logged a QMD. Col’s group were after the same, a good QMD, so he took Sip Powers, Phil Coleby and Ryan Anderson for some skills revision and maybe a Munro if the weather allowed. Nick Can- non-Jones, one of our civilian MICs took Jane Keenan, H Harris, Ian McNiven and Ryan Beckett out for their shake-out day. Continuing the QMD theme, Niall Archibald took Phil Seely, Mark, Ali Allsop and I out onto the Cairngorm plateau for some nav work and impart his particularly impressive knowledge of all things Scottish mountains (whether it be flora, fauna or historical) on the group. A great first day.
You know the conditions are poor when even Col Kingshott has one axe on his packratherthantwo,sohetookhisteam off for some more Munro bagging, as did Geordie (minus his Brompton, he left that at the Lodge), Niall and Gemma, our civilian WML. The aim of the majority of Members was to gain QMDs towards JSAT qualifications, but some were determined to climb, so Andy Hogarth (MIC) and Nick Cannon-Jones took climbing pairs out into Sneachta to climbing something. Anything. Sneatchta didn’t disappoint, and Ali and I got some climbing in, as well as Guy and Jane. So although the season was pretty thin regards to conditions, on the high ground it was still winter, so the Members were still getting their QMDs ticked-off.
Geordie led his team to Coire Laogh Mor and went through snow anchors, bollards etc as training for future JSAT courses.
The QMD theme continued (Col was still only carrying one axe, he’s a better indication of conditions than MWIS), with Geordie and Gemma taking their teams on a ghost-hunt to Ben Macdui (strength in numbers I suppose) and Niall taking Phil, Mark and Alex out for some more quality instruction and Scottish mountain facts. Ali and I headed into Sneachta again, determined to have two axes out rather
38 ARMY MOUNTAINEER