ml and scrambling

Tue, Mar 11, 2008

The Mountain Leader (summer) award is more or less for leading groups in the UK and Ireland on non scrambling terrain. I sometimes call it the Grassy Mountain Leader award as you’re not “allowed” to lead scrambles. It’s a grey area though. What I mean by “allowed”, is scrambling is not in the remit of the award, as it’s a walking award, however, what it boils down to is you can use the rope in an unplanned situation but not go out in the hills intending to use it. So if you are leading a group of very strong walkers who would have no trouble going along, say, the Clach Glas ridge unroped, you could argue that you had no intention of using the rope. On the other hand, if you tried it with a group of novices, as a competent leader, you would know where the rope would be needed and therefore that its use was planned and you’d be out of remit. It’s this grey area that puts most of the Cuillin “off limits” to ML award holders, including myself.

Well, it depends what award you are working under. I’m going to be leading for the HF again this year and as I have my ML(S) I’m graded F# and able to lead all their mountain walks in the UK. On top of that, I can register to take the ridges and scrambles assessment, which would let me lead specialist holidays for the HF, on ground that is out of remit of the ML award. If I wanted to lead those same routes but within the ML remit, I’d have to gain the MIA award. Now this is a fine award and one that is prolly within my capabilities, if I wanted to spend well over a thousand pounds and teach rock climbing in the mountains of the UK and Ireland. But I don’t. I could go on the training, as I have enough VS 4c leading experience but to go for assessment I’d have to then teach rock climbing, which I’m not interested in. I just want to use my decades of mountaineering experience to lead groups in all mountainous terrain, including the Cuillin and the superb routes on the Ben. But there’s no way for someone like me to do that within the MLTUK award structure. MIA is a career path, rather than the recreational ML awards. HF have addressed this with their ridges and scrambles “module”, which ML qualified leaders can take. MLTUK require the huge leap from ML(S) to MIA. Admittedly, MIA covers you for rock climbing up to VS 4c but all I want is to be covered for scrambles up to grade 4.

As well as the remit aspect of ML/MIA, there is also the instructional aspect of these awards. ML has none. MIA equips you to teach scrambling and rock climbing. I’ve heard that the distinction between a guide and a leader, is a guide will equip you with the skills to let you explore your own capabilities and broaden your experience, by passing on knowledge and skills of their own. A leader shows the way in the mountains and is there in case things go pear shaped and the group needs to get down in a hurry or navigate in gnarly weather. A guide would teach navigation, a leader would navigate.

So there are basically two aspects of the ML(S) award that are lacking for me. Remit and Instruction. Apparently MLTUK are looking at a non MIA instructing award but I haven’t seen anything that can push the remits of the ML(S) award. I had discussions about “modules” on the MLTA forum, where ML holders could perhaps add a scrambling module to their award, rather than try to bridge the enormous gulf between ML and MIA. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of these discussions.

Modules are available to holders of the SMBLA awards for trail/mountain biking. It’s possible to gain a core award such as Trail Cycle Leader and then add modules as your experience grows, such as night riding, winter riding, expeditions etc.

The HF and SMBLA models follow the latest thinking in best practice in higher education, where candidates can start on a journey of learning, rather than register for an award and either pass or fail at the end. Fail and you leave with nothing. Instead:

“…different pathways through higher education qualifications should be available and should not be prescriptive. There has long been a need for clearly signposted routes through the qualifications maze, and we suggest that the proposed framework is adopted by higher education institutions so that it can be used by individual students to plan and map their own personal progress. By allowing for movement in different directions the framework will represent, we believe, a network, rather than a ladder, of opportunities…”

Those pathways do exist in the MLTUK awards scheme but they’re not granular enough, as evidenced by the large gap between ML and MIA. Should there be a pathway to progress from ML(S) to ML(S)+1 (able to lead grade 1 scrambles), to ML(S)+4 (the likes of Tower Ridge)? Or should it just be ML(S)+S? I would think ML(S)+S would be the way to go. To lead on scrambling terrain, the aspirant leader should have several grades in hand as they could be soloing at some point, so I would think that a requirement of being able to lead to VDiff would be the minimum for assessment for adding a scrambling module to ML(S).

It’s always important to remember our limits though. On a sunny day, romping unroped up Tower Ridge, bypassing the crowds and generally having a whale of a time colours our impression of leading. “I could lead this no bother”, you might say. But given a group of 4 novices, in a sudden June snow shower at the exposed Tower Gap and foul weather rapidly closing in, being caught out by the volume of traffic on the route, what would you say then? Any assessed extensions to the ML remit would certainly take this into account.