As the winter draws nearer everyone starts preparing for the season ahead. My work this autumn has been a mixture of running Dry-Tooling Workshops and setting routes for Tooling Comps.
It all kicked off with a round of the Scottish Tooling Series over at Glenmore Lodge. I ran 2 Beginners Workshops and 1 Advanced. It was amazing the enthusiam that was shown by everyone taking part. From those who'd never picked an axe up before to those looking to hone their skills for the competition that day.
The day ended with myself giving a lecture of my previous winters activities with shots from Nepal to the Alps to Scotland.
The following weekend saw me back down in North Wales running workshops for the AMI AGM. This was a well turned out event hosted by Plas y Brenin. Myself and Dave Macleod ran CPD workshops over the 2 days. Dave looking at rock climbing/ bouldering skills and myself looking at drytooling/ mixed climbing skills at the Beacon Climbing wall.
The next weekend was a long journey back north again this time to set routes for the ICE FACTOR round of the Scottish Tooling series. This was the final round of the series and it was going to be a few close fought competition to decide the overall winners.
No pressure then. I was in charge of over seeing all the problems set and setting the final routes.
The day went off well with problems to challenge all abilities. Coming through to the final it was hard to know how the routes id set would go down. Some proved to hard where as others were made to easy but this made out for a few gripping Superfinals to keep everyone on edge.