Well I have spent the weekend working at the Plas Y Brenin Expedition Symposium, which was a great priviledge to be asked to deliver the Intorduction to Bog Walling workshop. A reasonably tough challenge of trying to show all the additional skills as opposed to normal rock climbing that you need to scale a big wall like the Nose of El Capitan. Hopefully I managed to cover enough within the short time. Having heard some feedback, it really sounded like I managed to make the most of the 2 hours sessions and give people a really good idea about what they need to do to prepare themselves for natures biggest rock climbing challenges.
Other than my workshop I also went to see Ray Wood talk about film and photography on expeditions, which was great he talked a lot about the process and commitment you need to make to get the images you want. I certainly learnt a thing or two. There were workshops going on everywhere, and all manner of ‘experts’ from doctors lecturing of high altitude medicine and general Exped Health, right through to cooking, women issues, going light with Kenton Cool, rope work for trekkers, Getting the most from your GPS, Sports Climbing holidays, emergency first and even expedition planning. Everybody seemed to be buzzing who attended, all getting to attend several workshops and talk through there aspirations and dreams with a lot of experts who had been there and done that.
It was a really good weekend and a tribute to its organiser Stu MacAleese from PYB. Plas Y Brenin has got a paddlesports expedition symposium in February, if you are that way inclined, even if your not I am sure that many of the workshops will have content that is applicable to any form of expedition. Hopefully this will become a annual event. I will get some photos up from the weekend when I get round to uploading them, some were taken by Pete Cattrell, I will try and remember to credit him when I put them on the blog. I also have a diagram to put on my coaching site as well as possibly a video of my workshop.