A sure fire bet for great weather is to be working and so it proved this weekend at Plas Y Brenin, as 100 or so Mountaineering Instructors descended on North Wales, timed to clinical perfection as the first snows of the winter fell on the mountains of North Wales.
The reason for this gathering was the annual meeting of the Association of Mountaineering Instructors (AMI) and as one of the major sponsors of the association (the other one being DMM) I was duty bound to gather up the giant ME flag and do my best to wave it around.
The Association was formed some 19 years ago, and represents all professional mountaineering instructors who hold either the MIA or the MIC award. As such the weekend is a mix of important nitty gritty regarding the workings and direction of the Association as well as an opportunity for qualified instructors to gain further training and professional development in a variety of disciplines, hence the programme of workshops.
And thats where we came in again, ensuring that two of our Pro Partners (Dave Macleod and Andy Turner) would be delivering some of those workshops. For Dave that meant delivering a rock climbing masterclass session and for Andy sharing his intimate knowledge on the dark art of Dry Tooling - both focussing on personal climbing as well as coaching.
On the Saturday evening Dave also gave a lecture, one of the first he has given focussing on his massive project on St. John's Head on Orkney. After that it was to the bar, from that point the details are somewhat sketchy, but I do remember being very definitely not the last one to leave at around 1:45am.....I am told the committed professionals kept going until nearly 4am.
