...ROCK CLIMBING, SCRAMBLING, MOUNTAINEERING AND HILLWALKING IN NORTH WALES...GUIDING, COACHING AND INSTRUCTION
Slogging up a mountain is not everyone’s cup of tea and in this course we try and avoid that by Hill and Coastal Walks in North Wales. We do this both in Snowdonia National Park so we can get some splendid views of those impressive mountains…
This five day Mountain Skills course aims to introduce you to a wide range of skills for venturing into the UK mountains in summer conditions. To achieve this we spend the week out in the hills exploring the best Snowdonia has to offer for hillwalking…
Do you want to come and experience the classic walks in Snowdonia? Hike the very best routes and be shown the most amazing views and locations? If the answer is yes then our classic walking in Snowdonia will open a door to a side of the mountains you never knew was there.
Many lowland walkers want to challenge themselves by climbing bigger and bigger hills, what this means is eventually you are going to have to climb a mountain. Officially this is a peak above 600 metres, in many people eyes they see a mountain as a steep rocky peak. Fortunately, in Wales this simply isn’t the case. There are plenty of Mountains that have very pleasant routes to the top where you have to go out of your way to find any rock or scree. So if you want to walk up a mountain rather than climb one this is the course for you.
The classic walks we use are found all over Snowdonia and we can move around to get the best of the weather. Typical routes are
As well as guing on these routes, we can also take the time to introduce some navigational skills. So that should you wish to return or venture out on your own then you will have the foundations of the skills you need to be an independent hillwalker.
Hundreds of thousands of hillwalkers and tourist ascend Snowdon every year. Many do this successfully without a guide. However every year hundreds require rescuing from Snowdon. Often because they underestimate the difficulty. The local rescue team responds to nearly 300 rescues a year, nearly one…
Coaching climbing movement is a branch of skill acquisition, whereby we as coaches can develop an individuals overall skill for climbing through introducing and developing motor skills. By the end of this evening course, you will not only be able to break down skills into…
This course examines the theory and practice of teaching and learning, and how they interact with anxiety. All of the skills covered come under the umbrella of what can be considered ‘Effective Coaching’. The C word has become more and more prevalent in climbing. What does it mean and how can an understanding of Effective Coaching help your coaching and instruction?
Well we teach a variety skills both theoreticall and a to a certain extent practically on this day long course. The main outlinbe of the courses is:
This course will be of interest to CWA, SPA and MIA award holders and trainees, as well as parent or in-house trained staff who want to understand more about how to teach and coach.
If you would like to find out more about effecitive coaching them why not look at Snowdonia Mountain Guides book on the subject EFFECTIVE COACHING: The Coaching Process for Climbing Instructors
This course is aimed at people planning to go on a Mountain Training NGB assessment in either Summer Mountain Leader, Single Pitch Award, Climbing Wall Award or Mountain Instructor award and want to refresh skills that are hard to consolidate alone. We have also had…
This evening course covers the rigging aspects of the SPA syllabus and is ideal to help you refresh your skills in preparation for your assessment. The course changes depending on what skills you feel you need to work on and are practically based at single…
To answer this ask yourself what it is you think an outdoor instructor does and the skills you need to do that job…
Most people will recite the ML, SPA and MIA syllabus just fine but there are other skills beyond those that will turn you from someone who is qualified to someone who can offer more than a lesson in tying knots, making belays or climbing up a rock face. In essence, there are skills beyond the remit of the syllabi that will help you stand out from the crowd on your assessment.
Many people refer to these as soft skills but make no mistake these are hard skills to develop. As part of helping you reach the requirement for your Nation Governing Body (NGB) award, Snowdonia Mountain Guides focus on developing you as a coach, instructor, climber and a person. So that you can qualify and shine as a well-rounded instructor, guide or coach. We believe that reaching the technical level to gain the qualification is just the starting block. If you ask other guides and instructors what the trickiest thing they have to deal with when working you can bet that it is not knots or rope systems. Instead, it is understanding themselves, their clients and managing all this in an appropriate way.
Snowdonia Mountain Guides mentorship programme focuses on you as an individual and helps you become a well-rounded instructor by ensuring you tick all the syllabus and then deliver these ‘extra’ skills so you feel confident to go straight out into the real world and succeed.
We have also written several books on the subject of coaching and rock climbing. The most relevent being.
We like to think of them as human skills, in that if you genuinely care about what you teach and do it in the mountains then you can’t but deliver effective instruction. We do this by helping you develop:
Mark Reeves our mentor has a great experience in teaching all areas of mountaineering and can help you understand teaching through an analysis of what a person needs to know versus quite often what you the instructor might like to teach them. In essence we will teach you how to break a skill down an isolate a small section of those skills so you can deliver a progressive teaching session over one day or one week.
We also cover the basics of teaching and learning to give you the upper hand on what to teach and when to teach it. In essence we help you become a great teacher and coach.
We believe in practising what we preach in that all our students from those beginning to climb, right the way through to the instructors we mentor are all individuals. As such no two paths are the same, but within this there are common themes.
First off we use our lead guide, Mark Reeves who has 20 years instruction and coaching rock climbing experience, an MSc in Applied Sports Science (Effective Coaching, Sports Psychology and Performance Physiology) and a BA(Hons) in Environmental Planning and Management, will oversee your mentorship.
We will arrange a meeting to assess and discuss your specific needs, he will look at your logbook and on the back of this designs a programme that suits both your time and financial constraints. This inital consultation costs £150 and is the entry point to join our mentorship programme. Based on this initial meeting we will also offer follow-up meetings and oppotunieis for observed and supervised coaching work with Snowodnia Mountain Guides. This will often be alongside our paying clients so it is imperative for us to build trust between the mentor and mentee. Our aim is to put into practice what we have covered and help you reflect on new ways to progress.
Additional sessions can be on a 1 to 1 or group base. The cost will be shared if there are a few of mentees with similar issues. We also have some free online resources and can offer remote contact through messaging services. We mentor any of the mountain based awards from SPA, ML and MIA. We also offer a monthly climbing meet free of charge for all menses and a monthly group evening CPD/workshop session.
As part of being on the mentorship scheme there will also be opportunities to shadow and observe Snowdonia Mountain Guides coaches on courses and we can help you by arranging real students for you to gain some supervised experience of teaching real clients.
We can also help with a mock assessment day. Including ‘real’ students, to help get you ready for the added pressure of assessment and give you an idea of just what an assessor will be looking for. We can also give you an idea of whether you are ready and what you really need to work on before your assessment.
Of course the real benefit is that we guarantee that you will go into any assessment better prepare, more confident and much more likely to pass 1st time than you would if you had not been mentored.
This course is a part-time non-residential route to becoming a mountain based instructor. If you want to break into the industry and want a helping hand to guide you through the qualification process then this is the course for you. Snowdonia Mountain Guides offer a…