saturday blog
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 March 2004 22:38:47
with the stress of fridays journey we had a quick drink in the bar and slept like logs.
we were staying at plas-y-brenin and the course was 'navigation skills'.
after a good cooked breakfast at 8 amongst like minded types we had a quick briefing before splitting off into different course groups, our course, rock climbing, mountain leadership... all very tempting!
we spent a short while in the library talking about maps & contours, all stuff i knew in theory just hadn't put into practice in a while. likewise for compass skills that followed.
after that it was time to head to the hills, we were split into two groups, the wife & i went in different groups to make sure we both learnt stuff!
we did a quick pacing exercise to see how many paces 100m was and roughly how long it took before heading up into the hills and the snow to find a tiny hollow which to illustrate a point was easily visible on the map.
we did some bearing following and pacing, heading off the beaten track to try and find various features. trying to visualise the contours before setting out and count the paces to estimate when we should be nearly there.
really good fun, didn't go very far or very high, but amazing scenery and weather.
after picking our way down a rather evil decent (much tamer in without the snow i imagine). we then took it in turns to lead legs on the way back, taking the groups to a certain feature, and them having to work out where we were.
my leg got a little of course as i learnt the important lesson that fences can move, whilst contours rarely do!
we all arrived back at the centre after 5 hours or so totally knackered... but that wasn't the end of our day! tea and cakes were followed by some more talks and planning of another short route.
early dinner and then we were off again... in the snow.. in the dark! we navigated our way around to a ring contour, down to a small tarn (which was froxen over until one of our group proved it was there!), across to a tricky ring contour, down to the llyn and then off to find our trickiest point.... the intersection between a snow hidden path and a contour line!
wife didn't enjoy the night navigation so much due to her group, but i won't gripe about that here.
a couple of pints in the bar saw me right.. .and back to bed which i could have done with after dinner!
thanks to simon & alex (f) our skilled instructors for an excellent day.
so many pictures to share.. here's a few from lisa's (aka wife) day:
(no not me... simon our exalted instructor)