Last Sunday I was back in teacher mode again. I was not a teacher of history, however, but a teacher of winter walking. On a university hillwalking club trip, I took a group up y Gribin on Glyder Fawr, a simple ‘Grade 1’ scramble (think easy rock climb), though it was banked out in snow and plastered in ice making it a rather harder challenge than normal. I had with me several experienced walkers, though several novices, some of whom had never been in the snow or used an ice axe before. As we headed up, I taught a novice as we went how to kick steps, hold an ice axe and arrest a slip. It was a fantastic day out, not least because I could see, as we descended from the summit, that the novice was kicking good steps, holding her axe in the uphill hand and moving with…
View original post 832 more words
The Echo Chamber 