So this post really dates back to November '11 when I went for my scout hillwalking permit assesment. We stayed at the Scout centre at Cornel in Snowdonia national park and the aim of the weekend was to put us through our paces. Much to dismay I arrived late on the friday night to find that the beds were terrible and a bad nights sleep left me wishing for my therm-a-rest. A bad nights sleep certainly put me on the back foot for the next day especial as the micro nav we were doing in the local area involved walking through knee deep heather which left me completely drained.
The second part of the exercise involved night nav and we rewarded with spectacular views across the Glyderau with some of the best weather I had ever experienced up to that point in snowdonia. I looked over enviously to Tryfan and wished I was doing something a bit more adrenaline filled than micro nav (I find it the most tedious thing ever).
The sunday involved much of the same kind of assessments, but I felt that my bad day on the saturday counted heavily against me, I guess I now understand why mountain leader assessment is five days long. The way the scout permit system works is that a permit is divided into terrain's. Terrain 1 is 500m-800m and terrain 2 is 800m+ however you are also awarded a lead only or a supervise permit. Although I admit my performance on the day was poor, we were also asked to include hillwalking logs and I was a bit dismayed to find a person with no hillwalking experience had managed to gain a much higher permit than me who had done a fair few years walking. Surely a system that allows this is flawed?
No comments:
Post a Comment