MOUNTAIN LEADER REFRESHER COURSE

Fresh snow, Cairn Gorm

Sunny afternoon

Descending Cairn Gorm

Chilly for map reading

Shelterstone in sun

Trailing Azalia

Old snow, Ciste Mherad

Coire an t-Sheachda

Cairngorm plateau

Cara and Olly are out with me on a Two day Mountain Leader Refresher Course. They have already completed their ML Training some time ago and have plenty of logged mountain days. It's always good to get some extra instruction and an oppurtunity to get up to date with the latest syllabus of the scheme. Today we concentrated on Navigation. Most deferrals on assessment of the ML are due to not reaching the required high standard of navigation.
We missed all the rain this morning but had some good cloud cover to make the nav 'realistic'. There had been some fresh snow above 1100m and there was a cold, strong NW wind. Not a typical summer day then! Interspersed with the map and compass work, we also covered group managment. Other subjects within the syllabus are environmental, flora & fauna  and weather. The Cairngorms of course has these in abundance!