Kathryn James - Mountain Expertise - guiding & instruction in North Wales

Holidays… 🇫🇷🇨🇭

Fun times in the Aravis and Mont Blanc massif.

Mountain Equipment

Busy week on MCI training part 1.
Day 1; Fundamentals of rescues and problem solving
Day 2; Using the climbing wall and single pitch crags as a MCI
Day 3; Multi pitch rope systems; series, parallel, lowering, abseils with safety ropes & stacked abseils
Day 4; Mountaineering 1:1
Day 5; Navigation

A great week of getting the fundamentals dialled, so there’s plenty of bandwidth for part 2. Part 2 focuses on working on multi pitch crags, teaching and mountaineering with 2 people on the end of the rope.

Some of these folks are back soon for part 2, hopefully they’ll be out putting into practise the skills they’ve learnt during part 1 so they are ready for the next course.

After they have completed part 2 they will be MCI trainees. The period between part 1 and 2 is a practise period to develop personal skills.

Thanks .barclay for your expert input through the week and delivering plenty of sound advice and positivity through the rain.

I hope the candidates enjoy the practise period; 1:1 mountaineering, climbing as a 3, navigating and practising rescues.

Adventurous couple of days working for with . Rock climbing, zip wire, abseiling, scrambling and walking all in the Ogwen valley. A pleasure to work with such a friendly well humoured bunch. Polite and fun folks and already pretty talented and familiar with moving around with ropes.

Bonus to ben working alongside Donald and , it’s been a while since that has happened.

Highlights from the 2026 Skye meet.

Big thanks to for their hard work providing the women with great days out. All the seasons in 1 week sums it up.

The shared successes on the hill and crag, cups of tea, tasting of local beer, saunas, wild swims and general love of all things mountain make these weeks special.

A safe space for women to be inspired by women to achieve great things in the hills and on the crag. Thanks for joining all of you, you all make it the special space that it is. See you next time or out there on the hills having your own adventures.

Thanks to .equipment.uk and for helping us keep folks dry and warm on these weeks by providing some top quality kit for us to lend out.

The Croft Bunkhouse near Carbost was a great base, and the new was beautiful, thank you.

Great day on pinnacle ridge, Sgurr nan Gillian. All the seasons in one day.
An excellent adventure with Claire for her final outing on the Skye meet.

equipment.uk

Worth a read...another great article from Claire.

3 days, 3 country’s and now on the Isle of Skye for the 2026 meet.

Cadair Idris for a long desired Paul Williams tick, nice climbing, chilly fingers and toes 🥶 Diolch Cymru

Gouther crag stop off on route, 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ classics, steep and burly on The Fang, balance and steady head the name of the game on Bloodhound.

Polldubh in the sun and before midge season…perfect stop off en route after some home made bread, home made chutney and cheddar cheese. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ today on Storm.

Let’s see what adventures the misty Isle brings

instructor training. Opportunity to share ideas, check on good practise and ask lots of questions.
We’ve focused on the key areas of our work as Mountaineering Instructors and Guides. Rock Climbing and mountaineering, with a focus on decision making.
How do we decide what is appropriate to teach?
How do we check for understanding in our students?
How do we keep ourselves safe?
How to we make sure our students understand where they are and what their next steps should be at the end of the course?

All key aspects of the ethos of a course.

working alongside sharing our varied experience and knowledge, and life long passion for training folks in the mountains.

Pinnacle club self rescue meet.
A great bunch of women, of all ages and a great sense of humour. A real pleasure to spend the weekend with them all.

We focused on the techniques that relate to the places they go climbing. Building fundamental skills on Saturday and looking at how things can get a bit trickier when out on the crag on Sunday.

Guideplate pros and cons, and problem solving
Prussiking up and down
Dealing with a damaged rope during retreat
Tying off the plate
Escaping to get help and getting to a casualty to do first aid and look after them until help arrives.

Great commitment from all to getting stuck in. Thanks to and .barclay for helping me deliver this weekend.

CPD workshops.

4 days 6 different crags. Exploring the intricacies of them all in the context of teaching folks how to be trad climbers.
Sharing stories, learning about legends (Kirkus, Ashal, Meshach and Shadrach), discussing the crag environment, etiquette and ethics.
What privilege to be able to pass on knowledge to others, to help the provider top days out on the classic teaching crags of north wales.

More to come in the autumn if you’re interested keep an eye out on CMS or drop me a message.