October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month For every booking made in October, we’ll donate 5% to Breast Cancer Now. You may wonder why we are doing this. In October 2018, at the age of 31, my partner was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes. Ben Vorlich, Arrochar Alps - Winter 2023 She got the whole shebang of treatment: Chemo, Surgery and Radiotherapy. Finishing active treatment after ten intense months. One thing that we always felt like people don’t talk or know enough about is what happens after active treatment finishes and that it really isn’t over when ..read more

Continued…… WINTER TRAVERSE OF THE LAWERS RANGE – Day 2 The last Munro of the Range An early rise, knowing the wind speed would be increasing as the day went on. With a brew on, we packed up and quickly set off along the ridge of Creag an Lochain as the sun began to rise. Our bodies slowly got into the swing of moving again after the big day previously, and the usual less than perfect sleep when wild camping. A couple of steep snow banks, requiring crampons and ice axe, soon got the brain alert and the latter part of the ridge was very pleasant up to Meall Nan Tarmachan (Munro #8) after the in ..read more

Chasing Snow, Scottish Winter Just want the Top Tips? Winter this year was all about focusing on my Winter Mountain Leader [WML] Training and spending time consolidating afterwards. Rescheduled from 2 years ago due to Covid, I had finally rebooked it for February. Winter requires ‘winter fitness’ which is a notch up from summer. Knowing it would be a tough week I had high hopes for plenty of days in the mountains this season pre training. However, I only managed a mere two days in the beautiful Arrochar Alps. Walking into the dark, Night Navigation on WML Training Regardless, I had a brillian ..read more

Glencoe Walking Weekend A few weeks ago saw the first of our Guided walking weekends offering 3 separate walks in this case around Glencoe. The idea being; come along to 1, 2 or 3 of the days as you fancied, with potential to reduce the overall travel for both clients and myself. Single day walks inevitably mean traveling back and forth in a single day for a lot of people. Adding this up over multiple trips and especially if you are bagging the Munros is a lot of cost for petrol & a lot of added pollution from the travel. This is not ideal for wallets or the impact it has on the environmen ..read more

Scottish Dry-Tooling Club at GCC An Intro to Dry Tooling with the Scottish Dry Tooling Club I wrote this a while back pre-winter season about a Scottish Dry-Tooling Club but it sat un-posted and with winter coming to an end and wishing you could be using axes still it reminded me of this article and I wonder if the event Helped me in the season? An Intro to Dry-Tooling Last November, on a Saturday evening in Glasgow, the Scottish Dry Tooling Club put on their Youth Fundraiser Event at the Glasgow Climbing Centre. A dry tooling event event aimed at raising funds to help send the Junior Climber ..read more

Perseverance in rockclimbing Yesterday was a big day for me: I attempted to climb my first E1 grade climb. To many this will not seem like much but for me it was huge. I’m not a natural climber. I struggled with a fear of heights to the point that when I started climbing, way back when, even lowering down on a top rope indoors felt daunting, let alone leading outside on protection you’d placed yourself. But climbing is a funny sport, it sucks you in. The more you climb the more you want to keep climbing. Red Flag HS 4c - Limekilns Trad Climbing Some friends at my local wall introduced me to t ..read more

Post Lockdown Trip to the Cairngorms With Scotland opening up for tourism again, and the warmer weather closing in, we were keen to get out and about in the hills once more. It’s been a while since the opportunity to get into the glorious Scottish countryside has arisen. Present circumstances have meant we’ve been staying home, but with restrictions easing, we’re now allowed to open up for bookings, so we wanted to get ourselves back into the swing of things. Heading out into the Cairngorms, the idea was to get the feeling back for the trail in and around the Cairn Gorm area of this mountain r ..read more

Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save lives. This blog was written prior to the Covid-19 lockdown and merely published a lot later than hoped. Remember we are still on lockdown, please do not head into the mountains. We are in this together. Ben Ledi Hike This blog post is meant as a reminder to always be prepared, even when the mountain is considered ‘easy’. Any mountain in the UK deserves full respect and should be approached with the correct skills & kit required for the conditions at play.   On the edge of the highlands, as you arrive along the A84, Ben Ledi stands behind the small to ..read more

Traverse of the Lawers range - Day 1 With winter always being about keeping a close eye on the weather and being flexible with your plans, a friend and I had hoped to do some winter climbing but were now onto, about, Plan F in our preparations. Time and logistics had, so far, not allowed for any climbs but with a prevailing weather window of very low winds and potential sunshine above the clouds, we headed for the Lawers Range. The range takes its name from the highest of the mountains in it; Ben Lawers, the 10th Highest Munro (and by extension, mountain in the UK) but this range has a total o ..read more