This weekend was mostly spent at the EICA under the excellent instruction of Nick Crawshaw and Euan Whittaker. Apparently this was the first CWA training course to be run in Scotland. I had put in a fair amount of hours with the GWC Climbing Club over the last few months and felt I had learned a great deal from watching the instructors teach the kids. This made me keen to get more involved with things and then I read online that the CWA was being introduced as an award scheme and that there would be a training course at the EICA. So I signed up straight away; keen to learn all that I could.
It was good to meet new folk that were also keen on climbing. There were a great mix of experience and knowledge in our group. A few were taking the training for similar reasons to me, and others were hoping to make a living by becoming full time climbing instructors. I think it was fair to say that I was one of the least experienced, but that didn't bother me at all; I was keen to learn from the others in the group too. We spent the first day at the EICA looking at group management, belaying, games, various belay devices and we also did some personal lead climbing. As part of the training, we needed to visit another climbing venue; so we headed across town to Meadowbank Climbing Wall. I have to say that this was nothing like any climbing wall I had ever seen before, but very interesting to see how indoor walls have progressed. It was basically a brick wall made from... well... bricks... and mortor, just like the wall of a building. Various bricks were missing or protruding to make surprisingly good hand and foot holds. We joked that this is where house burglars must train, as it was like scaling the walls to break into a building! Joking aside, this turned out to be a great little venue and I learned alot from it. We looked at the anchors, how the ropes were set up, load rating stickers and a little bit of Abseiling. There were large rings located in the floor at the bottom of the wall and we were shown how to belay from them using an Italian (Munter) hitch; an excellent technique I thought.
The next day we were back at the EICA; with the aim at perfecting the set up of abseils indoors. I had climbed outdoors with Richard before and had also seen him set up an abseil at a crag before and he had said to me that the principals were the same, but the anchors would be different. I didn't really have a clue about what to do at the top of a climb outdoors or how to rig a proper abseil so I was very keen to be shown how to do it. To my surprise, it wasn't too difficult or complicated but very important to break it down and follow each step at a time. As expected, the anchors used indoors are always specific, fixed anchors. A bit more practice and a mock assessment concluded a very useful two days. Many thanks to Nick and Euan for a great two days training.
The next day we were back at the EICA; with the aim at perfecting the set up of abseils indoors. I had climbed outdoors with Richard before and had also seen him set up an abseil at a crag before and he had said to me that the principals were the same, but the anchors would be different. I didn't really have a clue about what to do at the top of a climb outdoors or how to rig a proper abseil so I was very keen to be shown how to do it. To my surprise, it wasn't too difficult or complicated but very important to break it down and follow each step at a time. As expected, the anchors used indoors are always specific, fixed anchors. A bit more practice and a mock assessment concluded a very useful two days. Many thanks to Nick and Euan for a great two days training.
