Mountain Leader Training

Overview

The Mountain Leader scheme is designed by Mountain Training for you if you want to lead groups in the mountains, hills and moorlands of the UK and Ireland. Mountain Leaders operate the length and breadth of the country with all sorts of groups of people.

The qualification is what you make of it, and there are countless opportunities for passionate Mountain Leaders. If you love being out in the mountains and want to share your enthusiasm with others, become a Mountain Leader and you’ll never look back.

We create a positive learning environment and aim for everyone to have fun, feel relaxed and learn loads.

The Objectives

• Opportunity and Competence: The Mountain Leader scheme offers the opportunity to gain technical competence in leading walkers in the hills and mountains. It is the combination of technical skills, wide experience and personal leadership qualities, which form the basis for effective group management, and the scheme assesses all of these aspects.
• Values and Conservation: Mountains mean freedom, adventure, beauty, and solitude. Therefore, whilst fostering a love of the hills in others, group leaders should show appreciation for the needs of all hill users, rural communities, and upland habitats and encourage an understanding of the problems of mountain conservation and access.
• Training and Syllabus: You’ll cover the skills on the Mountain Leader syllabus, after which you can go for a period of consolidation before your Mountain Leader assessment.
• Practical Experience in Snowdonia: You’ll have 6 days of practical and theory learning from our base in the stunning Snowdonia landscape, including a wild camp in the mountains.
• Preparation and Action Plan: To develop an action plan for your consolidation period and help you to prepare for your Mountain Leader assessment.

What to Expect

You’ll cover all the practical skills and techniques you need to guide groups hill walking and camping in the mountains of the UK and Ireland. We’ll take you through; aspects of navigation, group management, supervision on steep ground, risk assessment and emergency use of the rope. Consideration of the weather, mountain rescue, the environment and other related topics will also be covered.

Obviously we spend most of our time the mountains of Eryri (Snowdonia), but we’ll make use of our excellent classroom facilities to cover some parts of the syllabus.

Some evenings we’ll have a session with a cup of tea from 5.30 but we keep these to a minimum to give you a chance to relax.  We also go camping for one evening where we’ll go out into the dark to practice low visibility navigation.

Experience Required

You will need to register with Mountain Training before booking onto this course. To register, you must: be at least 18 years old have at least a year’s worth of experience of mountain walking have an interest in leading groups in the mountains, be a member of a mountaineering council: BMC, Mountaineering Scotland or Mountaineering Ireland (you can join one when you register if you’re not already a member). https://www.mountain-training.org/help/faqs/registration

You should have 20 Quality Mountain Days in your Dlog prior to attending this training course. Take a look at the Mountain Training Syllabus for full information on the qualification.

How Should I Prepare?

To get started on the Mountain Leader qualification you need to meet the following prerequisites:

• You must be at least 18 years old
• You should have at least a year’s worth of experience of mountain walking
• You should have an interest in leading groups in the mountains
• You must be a member of a mountaineering council: BMC, Mountaineering Scotland or Mountaineering Ireland (you can join one when you register if you’re not already a member)
• Be registered for the Qualification with Mountain Training
• You must have recorded a minimum of 20 Quality Mountain Days (ideally on DLOG) which can have taken place at any point (pre- or post-registration)

Download course handbook here

Note: Our instructors will assess any safety equipment you bring with you. If they consider it to be below the required standard, you will be asked to use equipment provided free of charge by Plas y Brenin.