Page 46 - 2019 AMA Summer

MISCARTICLE
EXEMPTION vs TRAINING
Unlike the Mountain Leader scheme, the JS climbing scheme does not directly marry into the Mountain
Training Rock Climbing Instructor Award. If, like me, you are the sort of person who enjoys collecting pieces of paper with qualifications printed on them this can be a source of frustration. However, this year I decided I would invest in myself and begin the long journey through the civilian qualifications with the aim for the distant future being my MIA.
The new civilian RCI award is a revamped and improved version of SPA which most of us are familiar with. It falls somewhere around RMT on the military scheme, although with subtle differences such as the log book requirements and assessed personal climbing grade.
Having attained my RML back in 2016 and since then delivering dozens of RSF courses and multi-activity style climbing
sessions both indoors and out, I was pretty certain that I would be granted exemption from training by the MTA. I am familiar with the process having done this for my ML in 2018 after not sorting out my admin and getting the civilian tick when doing my MLT at Indy a couple of years earlier. For ML exemption I had been advised to have a very robust logbook with a bare minimum of 50 QMDS (the minimum requirement for ML assessment is 40) and for them to be as varied as possible with detailed descriptions to make them unquestionable to whoever was inspecting my logbook. I then paid the MTA £50 which I was told would be non-refundable should it be deemed that I was not a suitable candidate for exemption. This felt like a bit of a gamble.
I was prepared to do this again for the civilian RCI award, but a friend pointed out to me that for not a lot of money I would have the opportunity to pick the brains
of an experienced instructor for 3 days which at the very least would confirm that I was where I needed to be and where I believed I was. This theory, combined with an article in the previous issue of the Journal by Al Mason on how to access Standard Learning Credits for civilian AT quals, spurred me on to book an RCI training course. I also decided to do it in March so that when my SLC refreshed in April I could use them again for the assessment, saving me a few hundred quid in the process. Feel free to read that in your best “thrifty Yorkshireman” accent.
As North Wales is a known location for me itseemedlikeagoodplaceformytraining and assessment. Sam Leary of Leading Edge came highly recommended to me by other AMA members and put a course on in mid-March, just in time to use up my SLC for the training year.
46 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER