Lumen Mountain Adventures (2024)

01/08/2024

10 days in the Highlands prepping for MCI assessment - from Dunkeld to Fort William, Applecross, Torridon and Gairloch then back to Fort William again. Climbing, mountaineering and teaching, from valley cragging to big mountain faces. A class weekend and a half, thanks to Cam, Charlie and Al for all the peer/instructor input and practice and to all my mock clients for coming out with me! Great to catch up with Nate at Skye Mountaineering too.

07/06/2024

It's feeling pretty wintery again in the hills this weekend, despite being June, but it was a lot more summery this time last week! A reminder of just how changeable the conditions can be in the Scottish mountains.

A phenomenal couple of days out - a bluebird day on Saturday for an ascent of the classic Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis with Emily and Lewis which felt like a summer alpine day, the a less sunny but still (mostly) dry day on Curved Ridge on the Buachaille on Sunday with Alasdair and Shauna. Thanks as always for helping me out as I prepare for MCI assessment!

06/06/2024

An absolute pleasure to spend last week guiding in Glencoe with Yorkie Talkies Outdoors! ⛰️ Mixture of weather with it slowly improving through the week with the views slowly revealing themselves!

22/05/2024

Another fine weekend in the lakes climbing and working on a charity walking event! Great to catch up with folks and be involved with another well run event.

Walking With The Wounded

16/05/2024

Classic early summer lakes trip - climbing, swimming, dossing around Keswick and an impromptu display of the northern lights!

14/05/2024

A brilliant recent weekend on Skye guiding for a group from EYW - Edinburgh Young Walkers as part of my preparation for upcoming Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor assessment later this year. Great to work alongside Jamie on the ridge and bounce ideas off each other and watch the other work with mock clients - super useful!

We were very lucky with the weather and managed a series of classic days out including a traverse of the northern Cuillin munros, the four tops of Sgurr a Mhadaidh and an ascent of the innpinn and Sgurr Mhic Coinnich. The weather took a turn for the worse on the bank holiday Monday so Jan and I headed south to Glencoe where the weather was better and managed a successful ascent of Crowberry Ridge on the Buachaille.

A class long weekend and great practice for the assessment! Thanks to everyone who has come out and been a guinea pig on a rope with me, it's much appreciated.

29/04/2024

After a wet and cold start to the spring, good weather finally arrived in the Highlands this weekend. A phenomenal weekend on Skye and Raasay where unusually the weather was better than on the mainland!

Two classic Cuillin routes - the amazing Clach (class) Glas - Blabheinn traverse and Sgurr nan Gillean's Pinnacle Ridge. Perfect grippy gabbro and basalt d***s, big mountain exposure and brilliant climbing over two of the UKs finest mountaineering routes, topped off by dinner hosted by Nate and Lizzie at Skye Mountaineering (many thanks!) and stargazing out of the van.

Testing my new mescalito approach shoes on the Cuillin - very good first impressions!

02/04/2024

Early spring Scotland adventures 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A long Easter weekend of mountain sports in grand company to kick off spring and mark the clock change!

Some fine touring conditions to be found high up in the Cairngorms - two days of skiing with Dave and Cat after attending a rescues workshop on Friday, followed by a leg stretch up Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig over west for Easter Monday. Spring can often be the best time of year to be in the Scottish mountains as the days get longer, the weather gets better and the midges have yet to emerge!

05/03/2024

Winter climbing in Scotland can be a frustrating exercise - good conditions can prove elusive and the weather is often wild. When it comes good though, it can be excellent. Over the last couple of weeks I have been out quite a bit with several good friends and trusted climbing partners where we have found some great conditions and surprisingly good weather! Snow and ice routes have remained lean for the most part - this has unfortunately been a "low snow" winter to date. Mixed climbing comes in much quicker though and while it is not my preferred or strongest style of winter climbing it is still a lot of fun.

Particularly great was climbing Deep Cut Chimney on Hells Lum at the weekend with Oliver Grady. I've wanted to do this route for years since seeing a picture of it - the top pitch looks totally improbable and is absolutely outrageous - it must be one of the most photogenic pitches of winter climbing in Scotland. And as it turns out, it wasn't even the crux pitch in current conditions!

Skye Mountaineering

03/03/2024

It's not often that you hope for whiteout conditions in the mountains - but it certainly helped to put things into context today running a winter navigation and avalanche awareness course for Edinburgh Young Walkers!

12/02/2024

A fine winter expedition over Aonach Beag yesterday - and a good example of how quickly conditions can change in the mountains and the importance of being prepared and skilled up. Blue skies, sunshine and light winds gave way rapidly to thick cloud and snow enveloping the peaks in the late morning, resulting in whiteout (sometimes referred to as "the white room" or likened to being inside a ping pong ball). The summit ridge and plateaus of the Aonachs are serious places in these conditions, with large corniced cliffs right next to the summit of Aonach Beag. In nil visibility like this in winter, it would be all too easy to wander off the edge of a cliff - especially since corniced edges make it impossible to see where solid ground actually turns to empty space! Yesterday the only visible features at the top were glide cracks in the snowpack, where recent warmer temperatures have caused the snowpack near the cliff edge to "creep" - this can result in full depth avalanches though these are extremely hard to predict.

There were also reports of multiple avalanches in the area yesterday. Good route choice, honest assessment of you and your parties equipment and skill level, knowledge of avalanche conditions and excellent navigation skills are all essential to an enjoyable and more importantly safe day in the hills at this time of year. But with these in place some incredible days out in what feels like an entirely different world can be enjoyed!

12/01/2024

2024 already delivering some amazing mountain days - bluebird skies and great snow conditions up high for a couple days out trying the new ski touring setup around glenshee and helping Colin to consolidate some technical skills for his WML. Can confirm that descending munros on skis is even more fun than glissading!

A reminder of the seriousness of winter terrain today watching somebody very nearly get caught in an avalanche - the snow may be well consolidated now and the avalanche forecasts a full ring of green - but remember low doesn't necessarily mean no!

31/12/2023

Happy new year from Skye!

Here's to many more adventures in 2024.

04/12/2023

People often say they're going out to "play in the mountains", usually meaning some sort of athletic pursuit and sometimes associated with a level of (managed) risk. It doesn't generally mean literally playing with toys.

It's not often you get the chance to play a game of frisbee above 1000m on the Cairngorm plateau in winter conditions - but that's exactly what we did on Saturday regardless!

Absolutely stunning day to be out, if extremely cold - never warmer than -5 celsius all day even at low levels. A grand mini adventure made all the better by some snowy mountainbiking to reach the foot of the hills and a pedal back out in the dark. The hardest part of the day was negotiating snowy motorways driving through a blizzard in Fife, of all places!

27/11/2023

Traditional late autumn bothy trip with Colin and Innes - this time to Camban in the stunning Glen Affric. One of Scotland's most beautiful glens, largely due to the existence of some of the most extensive natural native woodland in the Highlands and successful ongoing efforts to rewild parts of it. The more natural ecosystem here is far healthier than many of the rural parts of Scotland where hill sheep farming and grouse shooting moors often dominate, denuding the landscape, degrading the soils and suppressing biodiversity in the process. It also looks very pretty with plenty of birch, rowan and Scots pine trees and associated plants and wildlife adding a new visual element to the landscape and breaking up the sometimes bleak appearance of these remote Highland glens.

Winter definitely taking hold on the high mountains now!

20/11/2023

Making the most of the wet weather after the thaw set in on Friday night to get out with fellow trainee mountaineering instructors James and Cameron (no relation to Hollywood) to practice crag rescue techniques. Lots of hanging on ropes in the rain working out different ways to solve scenarios that can occur when climbing, from simple problems like abseiling past a damaged section of rope isolated using a knot to more complex ones such as having an injured and unconscious climbing partner hanging on the rope while midway up a long multipitch route!

19/11/2023

Excellent weather and early season conditions on Friday getting winter off to a great start. Although followed by a thaw over the weekend, with indications of colder weather again by next weekend hopefully conditions will continue to build as we head into December. Living in hope as always for a good season ahead...!

A few other parties out climbing and quite a few ski tourers too making the most of the beautiful weather. We climbed The Seam (IV 5) on Fiachaill Buttress which I've previously led a few years ago - still a brilliant route.

12/11/2023

Great day instructing trad climbing at Auchinstarry Quarry on Friday with Alan, Matthew and Dagmar. Three keen and enthusiastic climbers with plenty of indoor experience looking to get into trad climbing, we managed to fit in 4 climbs each including 2 supervised lead climbs for each of them, as well as an anchor building workshop and an introduction to abseiling. All three well on the way to becoming independent trad climbers and psyched for more!

Thanks as always for helping me as I consolidate for the mountaineering and climbing instructor assessment.

06/11/2023

Beautiful autumnal day for a late season day of climbing instruction at Polney crag, Dunkeld. Euan and Ben both keen to learn to be more independent in the mountains on scrambling and lower graded rock climbing terrain, so the focus of the day was on gear placements, anchor building, risk assessment, different belay techniques, rope management and abseiling. Slightly wet rock in places failed to dampen spirits and much was learned! Perthshire looking at it's very best under blue skies and autumn colours, and I got a taste of the upcoming winter season as cracks needed excavated of leaves and pine needles to find gear placements 😅

Many thanks to Euan and Ben for helping me out yesterday as I continue to consolidate for the Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor assessment.

16/10/2023

A superb weekend of exploring the remote and wild isle of Rùm including a full traverse of the Cuillin (not to be confused with the Skye Cuillin!). Although autumn in the Highlands can come with some pretty grim weather, when the sun does come out it's a stunning place to be as the colours change into golden oranges and browns, accompanied by the roars of the stags in the glens below as the temperature drops. High winds and low temperatures did little to dampen spirits - the views were just too good.

Despite their moderate altitudes, the mountains of Rùm are superbly positioned off the west coast of the mainlands and provide incredible views in all directions, the panorama stretching from the bulk of the western mountain ranges, past Skye's famous ridge looming over the rest of the island, over to the outer Hebrides and finally out over the seemingly endless Atlantic ocean - to the southwest there is nothing for thousands of miles. Dramatic cones of volcanic rock rising straight out of the sea, several things make these hills unique: from their Norse names uncharacteristic of much of Scotland, to the colony of Manx Shearwater that burrow into the hillside (not in residence at this time.of year, but bizarrely in spring the island is home to nearly a third of the entire planets population of these birds) to the rock itself, similar but not identical to that of Skye's version. The scrambling is of a high quality and we took the chance to include the Askival Pinnacle, a Moderate graded climb leading to the highest point on the island.

The bunkhouse must also rank amongst the best in the country!

17/09/2023

A fantastic couple of days working on the Salomon Skyline Scotland weekend - two contrasting days, with Glencoe showing off it's autumn colours under beautiful blue skies on Saturday while course marking over Bidean with Walk Glencoe, followed by a resumption of normal service today with rain, mist and some cold temperatures on the tops! A slippery ascent of Curved Ridge sweeping the Glencoe Skyline, but always a fun way up one of Scotland's most iconic peaks whatever the weather.

Massive well done to all the runners on the numerous races across the event - some impressive efforts! And thanks as always to Ourea Events and Salomon for putting on another brilliant and well organised event.

Ourea Events
Salomon Running
Salomon Skyline Scotland

16/09/2023

Climbing the classic Big Top (E1 5a) on the west face of Aonach Dubh yesterday afternoon - September still offering some perfect climbing conditions in the Highlands. This wild feeling crag with a serious and exposed approach and descent offers some fantastic climbing within sight of Glencoe village, but feels like another world!

12/09/2023

Hot and humid on Saturday at the Maverick Race X Series Lakes 52km ultra. A hilly and technical course (my favourite kind!) taking in some awesome trails around the central Lake District. Glad of the cloud sticking around for much of the day or it would have been unbearably warm! A well organised race which I enjoyed working on the event team for last year so much I came back to run it as a competitor this year.

Fancy trying out trail and mountain running but not sure where to start? Send a message to organise a bespoke experience!

adidas TERREX
Maverick Race

04/09/2023

Great day mountaineering at the weekend on the Buachaille with Gary - we climbed Grooved Arete on the Rannoch Wall, the last VS on that face I hadn't done before, before abseiling back to the base. A quick bite to eat and then up Curved Ridge to the summit via a short diversion out to the top of Crowberry Tower. Blue skies and sunshine all day - summer isn't quite over yet! A fantastic introduction to one of Scotland's most iconic peaks for Gary, hopefully inspiration to head north more often!

Also great to run into a few fellow trainee mountaineering instructors preparing for their assessment this week, and others reccying to upcoming Glencoe Skyline race!

27/08/2023

Change of pace this weekend working at the LOCH NESS 24 event. Very glad of the tarp while marshalling out in the course for a mammoth 24 hours of trail running, in constant rain for the first half! Extremely sloppy underfoot conditions made for a tough race but some very impressive running from all the competitors - extra kudos to those who kept going all through the night! A fantastic achievement for all the runners.

Great to see several Penicuik Harriers Running Club members at the race! All the club runners put in a real shift and got awesome results.

Followed by a catch up and hill run on the way home with Dave who took us on one of his classic "Appleton shortcuts" that involved sliding down nearly vertical heather into a ravine, wading through the river and then a pitch of Severe grass climbing, soloed by pulling on the vegetation (aid climbing?!). All because he "likes straight lines" 😂

21/08/2023

This weekend I had the pleasure of joining good friend Colin Thompson as he completed his final Munro - 13 years in the making! We have done a lot together over the years and it was great to be able to be part of his achievement, which finished in the same place it had started - on the summit of Ben Nevis, with neighbouring Carn Mor Dearg being the final hill itself. The CMD arete was a pleasure as always, and the weather better than expected!

06/08/2023

Winter skills courses.

Winter is a time of the year when many hillwalkers avoid the big hills. Short daylight hours and poorer weather make any trip to the mountains more challenging, and when snow and ice cover the hills there's a whole host of new hazards to consider - avalanches, corniced cliff edges, long run outs down icy slopes in the event of a slip and the much dreaded whiteout conditions when ground is indistinguishable from the sky. Specialist winter equipment is needed (ice axes, crampons and winter boots) and there are skills to be learned in the safe use of these. The physical effort of moving in deep snow exhausts easily, and personal admin becomes much harder - thick winter gloves reduce dexterity and bigger, heavier packs with more gear is needed.

It's often said that there is no such thing as winter hillwalking in Scotland's mountains - only easy mountaineering. Yet the rewards can be astounding - nothing can match the feeling of standing on a mountain summit on a cold, crisp clear winters day when the hills are blanketed in snow as far as the eye can see. Equally, successfully managing to get up and down in the foulest and most difficult of winter conditions carries its own satisfaction.

It's extremely important for anyone venturing out in these conditions to learn the skills required. From using an ice axe (the "mountaineers multitool"), to putting crampons on and walking safely. Arresting a slip or fall on icy ground, and ascending steep snowy slopes. Awareness of avalanches and how to avoid entering avalanche terrain. Winter navigation when snow obscures all paths and the most commonly used navigation features and only the broad shape of the landscape remains. What to carry, what to do in an emergency and how to survive an unplanned night out on the mountain in the depths of the darkest, coldest time of the year. If you want to learn these skills and more this winter, drop a message - lots of availability for the coming season!

05/08/2023

Introduction to rock climbing.

Climbing is increasing in popularity, and the UK has some fantastic places to do it. But it can be an intimidating sport to get into, especially as most of the best climbing here is "traditional" or trad climbing - where there are no permanent bolts in the wall to attach your rope to, and all protection must be placed manually as you climb or a bottom rope rigged in advance.

Despite that it's a much safer activity than most people think. If you're a beginner or indoor climber looking to learn the basic skills required to get outdoors for the first time, either toproping or following (seconding) a leader up a route I can offer bespoke courses and experiences on introductory, easy access climbs. Or if you want to learn the skills to climb independently indoors or organise a sponsored group abseil event.

Please note - lead climbing skills and multipitch techniques fall outside the remit of the Rock Climbing Instructor (RCI) award I currently hold. I am however a trainee Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor (MCI) and can offer experiences in these on a voluntary basis, with the understanding that I am not yet qualified and these days will be for my benefit as well as yours. As a trainee I cannot guarantee my training will be at the same standard as a fully qualified mountaineering instructor and full member of the Association of Mountaineering Instructors.

04/08/2023

Guided trail, fell and sky running and skills courses.

Running in the mountains is an amazing way to move around the hills - as well as adding a new technical dimension with a whole host of movement skills to practice and develop, it also allows you to cover bigger distances and access more remote places without the need for a major overnight expedition. It can also serve as a steeping stone towards bigger objectives such as ultra-marathons or major ticks such as the Ramsay Round. Skyrunning is increasing in popularity and Scotland and the Lakes have some amazing hills and trails for it and the satisfaction and flow state that can be achieved is second to none. And contrary to popular belief you definitely do not need superhuman fitness to get started - anyone can give it a go!

It's not without its risks however - inevitably moving faster increases the risk of an injury, especially if care isn't taken to gradually develop the physical strengthening required to cover technical ground at speed. Carrying lighter weight and fewer items of kit also increases exposure to the elements if something unexpected does happen, and requires a careful balance of judgment. Navigation requires quicker thinking, and getting lost can happen in less time.

If you want to give it a go, be guided around some amazing running terrain or learn the skills necessary to be a confident, safe and independent mountain runner get in touch to arrange a bespoke experience.

03/08/2023

Guided Mountain Walks

Scotland's mountains offer an incredible range of landscapes, with each season of the year offering its own unique appeals. From blue skies and warm sunshine (well, sometimes!) in the summer, to autumn hues and berries, through the cold white beauty of winter and into the contrasts of spring - no matter your preference Scotland's diversity throughout the year delivers.

The challenges the mountains present can be intimidating, particularly in the darker, colder months of the year. Snow transforms hills into mountains - avalanches, cornices and blizzards can turn even the most benign of hillwalks into mountaineering expeditions. Even in the fairer months low cloud can descend and obscure the way, disorienting the unprepared.

If you want to experience everything the mountains have to offer while learning about the history, geography, flora, fauna and modern pressures facing these fragile environments - in any season - safely and under the instruction of an experienced, qualified guide get in touch!

Lumen Mountain Adventures