Busy Week for Snowdonia Mountain Guides

So this week I have been really busy with Snowdonia Mountain Guides. Most of the week I have been involved in delivering a Rapid Trad Climbing course for 6 people. This was very similar to many of our existing Intro To Trad or Lead Climbing Coaching courses but specially tailored to the specific needs of the group I was working with.

We had them lead climbing on day two as they have all had some climbing experience. We visited Lion Rock, Tremadog, Tryfan Bach, Castle Helen and then to finish we did a bit of sports climbing at Castle Inn. The guys climbed up to 6a on Sport and VS on trad.

 

On the Thursday though I had to step out from this course for a day, and after seeing them descend safely into Castell Helen, I had to reluctantly leave them to it with my team of instructors and return to Llanberis.

In Llanberis I had a big group of Charity walkers from Nando’s Management Team who wanted to climb Snowdon. I got there in time to meet another team of great instructors who were ready to represent Snowdonia Mountain Guides to lead this group of 37 amazing guys up ‘The Mountain’. Again these guy did an amazing job at leading this charity walk up snowdon. With the team reporting that they had an awesome time.

In total I employed 7 instructors this week, hopefully a sign of things to come as I start to develop Snowdonia Mountain Guides further.

Charity Walks up snowdon
A busy day on Snowdon during the Olympic Flame celebrations

New Websites and Facebook Pages

Ever since my previous employer went belly up, owing me a considerable amount of money I decide to start running my business more like, well a business rather than a lifestyle. If you like I have become more proactive in developing the sites and building what I hope are a couple of strong brands to push what I do.

Snowdonia Mountain Guides

This is my main business arm and at the moment is it doing really well at attracting every one from charity and families waling up snowdon through to my private climbing coaching work. However my desire to get back to Spain for some hot rock climbing next year doesn’t really fit with that branding.

If you want to keep up with what I do then I would suggest liking and follow the Facebook page.

How To Climb Harder

This brand is more reflective of the book I wrote in 2010. The website now has many lessons and videos all aimed to help people climb harder. In an attempt to offer more hot rock trips in the winter I have turn to this site to focus more on the rock climbing courses. As it really does explain my approach to coaching rock climbing.

Again I have moved to a new Facebook page to help keep people informed about the latest events here.

Vertical Life

This started life as a place for me to publish older articles that had previous been published in the climbing press. As well as showcase some of the short videos I made over the last few years. However in an attempt to turn it on its head i have instead started to try and link the articles to what I do on How to Climb Harder and Snowdonia Mountain Guides, in as much as they are about climbing and mountaineering around the world.

In a way it tries to sell mini and not so mini adventures across a whole level of experience. Again it now has a Facebook channel of its own.

Climbing Coaches

Finally you will see a logo going up on all my sites along side the AMI logo. The Association of Mountaineering Instructors is great but to me misses the obvious connection to climbing and the coaching I do. In a way I also felt that to offer climbing coaching you need more than a Mountain Instructor Award. Instead you also needed the add on of some form of coach education and a declaration of what level you actually climb at.

So I design Climbing Coaches to do that. It os free to sign up and you can share you D-log or UKC climbing logbook as well as tell people what addition coaching qualification you have in addition to the CWA, SPA or MIA.

Again it also has a Facebook presence.