Another mountain leader in the Lake District.

I recently qualified as a mountain leader, or ML. What is a mountain leader, I hear you ask, and why did I take the qualification? Well, I hope you’re all sitting comfortably.

A mountain leader, or summer ML in my case, is a person qualified to take a small group of people pretty much anywhere outdoors on the shores of the UK. Specifically, being trained to deal with the mountains and upland environment in all conditions, apart from in full Winter snow.

Why did I qualify? Well simply, it was to upskill myself and make me, and those with me, safer when we’re in the mountains.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know I’m partial to a mountain or two. Climbing mountains ticks a lot of boxes for me. Not only, does it provide incredible landscape, photography opportunities, but a day out in the mountains is incredibly good for your physical and mental well-being. If you don’t do it on a regular basis, you’ll certainly know about it the day after you’ve climbed a mountain.

Being a photographer based in the lake district allows me access to the mountains whenever I get the opportunity, which isn’t as often as I would like, but such is life eh?My family and I live a 15 minute drive from Blencathra and the mighty Hellvelyn range, which are amongst the tallest mountains in England, so access to these beautiful ranges is fairly easy.

There were two moments that incident that triggered my need to upskill and do the mountain leader qualification. The first was a day during a winter mountaineering trip to the Cairngorms. The leader of the trip is a good friend of mine, Matt, from Gateway Outdoors. https://www.gatewayoutdoors.co.uk We try to catch up every year for some winter mountaineering. This winter had a particularly heavy snowfall and we had one day where Matt’s experience and navigational skills, led us off the top of a plateau in 50 mph winds and full whiteout. If you’ve been in those conditions then you’ll know how hairy that can be. He didn’t use GPS, this was all done using the skills that every mountain leader is given during training, with just a map and compass. I realised then that I needed to know what he knew.

The second was when some friends asked me to take them on a three day wild camping trip to the lake District. We started and finished in Ennerdale, doing a circular ridge route camping on High Stile and near to Great Gable. Probably one of the quietest parts of the Lake District, so it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. Sitting watching the sunset over Wastwater with a hot cup of tea at 650m was an absolute joy and something that I wanted to do more of.

A qualified ML is able to navigate both during the day and at night using map and compass. They should have basic first-aid skills, a good understanding of the environment, weather patterns and know how to deal with a hillside casualty. Essentially, they should be capable of getting a group up and down from a mountain all in one piece and hopefully everyone will have had a good time. For anyone who has spent any time in the mountains, they will be well aware of the changing weather conditions which can all happen very quickly. What can start out as a pleasant walk can quickly turn into a challenging situation. Knowing how to avoid or deal with this is critical.

I did both my training and assessment in Snowdonia National Park, under the excellent guidance of Bryn Williams. Within a week of doing the training, I had a whole raft of new skills to go and practice in the mountains. This has given me the confidence to tackle most weather conditions, mountains and scenarios I had never considered , but most of all know when to turn around or not venture out into the mountains in the first place.

For anyone interested in hiking, trekking or just spending time in the outdoors, a simple navigation course is a must. I bump into so many people on the mountains who come unprepared, and are waving their phones around looking for a route, which then subsequently run out of signal and battery. Having a basic understanding and some of these navigational and safety skills in your locker is absolutely paramount to getting yourself, up-and-down without having to call out those lovely people at mountain rescue.

The benefits of having this qualification is that new business opportunities are now open to me. As well as picking up Freelance work as a mountain guide in the Lake District, I have set up a new photo trekking venture, combining both my 25+ years of photography experience and the ML qualification. This will be in the form of a guided photography workshop in the lake district.

https://www.markwilliamsonphotography.com/guided-photography-trekking

The ML qualification opens up doors for anyone wanting to get into outdoor education and I can heartily recommend it for those with an interest.

I must make a special note to one person who helped me on the way. This was the late Tom Furey, who worked for Bryn Williams at the time, he both trained and assessed me. Sadly, Tom lost his life in a tragic mountaineering incident shortly after my assessment. He was an extremely talented and inspirational guy who was taken away far too soon.