Our month: Mountaineering Scotland in June 2022

Our CEO Stuart Younie was invited to attend the St John Scotland 75^th anniversary celebrations in Edinburgh on the 17^th June. St Johns Scotland is a charity dedicated to saving lives and helping people and communities at home and abroad. With its historical origins going back to the 11^th century the Order was established in Scotland in 1947 and has been our funding partner supporting the delivery of our student Mountain Safety programme as well as a major contributor to the work of our friends and colleagues in mountain rescue teams all over Scotland.

Stuart also led a face-to-face meeting in partnership with Ramblers Scotland, Scotways and the Cockburn Association on the 23^rd of June to discuss the ongoing concerns about the action taken by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to close the Radical Road and Salisbury Crags. It was a helpful meeting and we will be preparing a more detailed update for members but it’s clear that HES have taken a very robust approach to managing the risk to the general public of rockfall from the crag. Further assessment of the rock has been advised but we are expecting a management plan, detailing the options to enable access to be reinstated, to be published in autumn this year. Importantly there was a commitment from HES to engage with the public and key stakeholders on the proposed solutions.

The ClimbScotland team were all hands on deck for the Scottish Youth Climbing Championships, Scottish Youth Speed Climbing Championships, Paraclimb Scotland Festival and Scottish Lead Climbing Competition on the weekend of 4-5 June. The competitions combined attracted 194 competitors from across the UK. Massive thank you to all who came along and special thanks to our key volunteers: Jury President Scott Forsyth, Chief Scorer Sophie Bosi, Speed Coordinator Allan Bownes, Competition Coordinator Keith Lynch and all the other volunteers who made the event possible. Shout out to the setting team who did an awesome job and EICA Ratho as the host venue too.

Our Regional Development Officers Robert and Calum delivered an outdoor session for Urban Uprising and their group of young psyched climbers at a rather hot Benny Beg, in Perth and Kinross this month.

The ClimbScotland team are currently organising an event which aims to bring the Scottish Climbing Wall Network together, providing a great opportunity for walls to get an update on what we are up to, discuss our future partnership working, and attend some practical workshops to support indoor climbing.

At the beginning of June Ross Cadie, Ben Gibson and Kirsty Pallas attended the Mountain Safety Group meeting which is chaired by Nigel Clark and has representatives from many different groups with interests around safety in the mountains.  

This month also saw the first face-to-face meeting of the Mountain Safety Team which was held at The Granary in Perth.  It was fantastic to get Ben, Kirsty and Ross together to start forming what this team will look like and how it will work towards its aims.

Ross attended the Mountain Training UK&I board meeting at Tollymore in Northern Ireland. This was the first in-person meeting that the board has had in over two years. Traditionally these meetings would happen three times a year, rotating around the National Outdoor Centres, but had moved to on-line due to the pandemic. It was decided that one meeting a year would be held in-person with the other two being held online to reduce the environmental impact of everyone travelling, with the acknowledgement that meeting in person has huge value to getting things done.

As well as meetings, our Mountain Safety Team also delivered two navigation courses in the Braemar area, two Going the Extra Mile courses in the Ochils, and a well-attended pair of online spring skills for the hills talks.

Spaces are still available on navigation courses later in the summer and our winter program dates will be available soon.