Mountaineering Scotland launches winter navigation courses

It may only be September – and the warmest for years at that – but Mountaineering Scotland is getting ready for the winter ahead.

Having listened to members’ suggestions, we’ve added a new winter course to our existing Winter Skills and Avalanche Awareness courses – Winter Navigation.

Winter brings its own challenges to navigation: snow conditions and weather conspire to make visibility a more frequent problem, cornices and avalanche-prone slopes have to be avoided, and shorter daylight hours means night navigation skills are often needed as well.

Devised by Mountain Safety Adviser Heather Morning, our new Winter Navigation course is aimed at people who have already learned to navigate in summer, and who have already acquired essential winter skills such as use of ice axe and crampons, having taken either our Winter Skills course or a similar course from another provider.

It will involve nine hours of intensive winter navigation training, with particular consideration to avoidance of avalanche prone slopes and cornice features. Techniques will include timing, pacing, walking on bearings, aiming off, boxing away from cornice edges, attack points and much more.

The course will also be timed to enable participants to get a taste of the challenges of night navigation.

There will be two one-day Winter Navigation courses held in February 2017, each with places for 12 participants on a 1:6 ratio with tutors. Booking for places is now open.

For more details on our Winter Navigation courses click here.