COURSES

Winter Skills Courses
2 & 5 day schedules looking at ice axe and crampon use, winter weather, avalanche avoidance and more.

Navigation & Hill Skills Courses in Snowdonia One, Two & Five day courses looking at mountain navigation and the shills required in the summer mountains. Includes NNAS Bronze & Silver Awards.

Rock Climbing Courses in Snowdonia
From "learn to climb" for complete beginners to multi pitch climbing and learn to lead courses we offer instruction in Snowdonia and rock climbing trips in Spain and across the UK.

Scrambling Courses in Snowdonia
From an intro to grade 1 scrambles through to grade 2 and 3 scrambles with Rob Johnson, qualified Mountain Instructor

Isle of Skye
Guiding and instruction on the Cuillin Ridge on Skye every May/June with options including scrambling on Skye and the Skye Ridge Traverse.

Alpine Trekking
A 5 day trek from Arolla to the Matterhorn through the Swiss Alps.

Mountain Leader & SPA Training & Assessment Courses
Training for outdoor professionals.  
 

Family Courses
Fun for all the family, courses that suit all age types held at weekends and school holidays.

Site Specific Training
Site specific training for staff at climbingwalls.

All images from the book Hillwalking published by Mountain Leader Training UK. Buy book

Contours
If you can get your head around contours then your map reading will improve massively. Contours are the most accurate feauture of the map and represent the shape of the land.

In the UK's mountains contours are spaced at 10m intervals on OS maps and 15m on Harveys maps. Some low level areas have 5m intervals.

Learning to visualise the 3d landscape shown in contours takes some practice. In simple terms the closer the contours the steeper the ground. The diagram below demonstrates how they work:

You can see that a circle on the maps contours will represent a summit or pinnacle shape on the ground. Spurs and ridges are shown as fingers projecting further than the land around it whilst valleys and re-entrants are shown as scoops cutting into the land.

A really good way of getting your head around contours is to take some time to relate the map to the ground. Sit down for a short break and pick out features on the map to features on the ground as shown in the diagram below.