As Blackford Quarry is my local crag I simply walked in through Blackford Glen to meet Euan, David and Steven just after 9am. I was another glorious day and we were all keen to get started. Euan gave each of us a task and told us to treat it like a mock-assessmemt. My task was to set up a top-rope on the main quarry wall, while David rigged a bottom-rope and Steven got cracking with a releasable abseil. It wasn't long before I had my rig set up and attached to the shiny bolts at the top of the main wall.
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| A releasable abseil rig, Blackford Quarry |
Euan then inspected our setups and gave us some pointers about how to improve our rigs - all very useful tips. We then took it in turns to run our setups with the others acting as our clients, then we rigged something else; we repeated this until we had all had a go at rigging everything that we had practiced yesterday.
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| Euan Whittaker demonstrating a releasable abseil, Blackford Quarry |
Euan then asked us to look at the quarry from a group perspective and how it weighed up as a group venue. We all agreed that it was a pretty ideal venue to bring a group for a day's climbing and abseiling. Euan then asked each of us to run a different group warm-up activity and then run a group bottom-rope session and we each practiced the bottom-rope rescue using a self-belay with a prusik.
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| Steven running a releasable abseil, Blackford Quarry |
Rather unexpectedly, the rain came... so we made a dash for the nearby cafe for coffees and a debrief from Euan. He asked me how I thought the course had gone. I had learnt a great deal and I was extremely glad that I had found the time to fit in the training course. He said that he had been impressed with my skills and that I should forget about doing the CWA and concentrate on getting my SPA instead. Apparently I was not far off the standard that he expects for assessment but I was told to climb as much as possible, practice my rescues and get my rigging really smooth. I was told that there was no reason why I shouldn't expect to do the assessment as soon as September 2012 - he said that it was easily possible, as long I was committed and followed his sound advice.
A brilliant few days. Many thanks to the EICA and to Euan for all his advice and support. I'm now super keen to climb as much as possible a finish my SPA.
