Midlands meet-up on the Long Mynd
11th May 2021
A huge thanks to Paul An opportunity for a midweek hill social, and hill skills refresher on The Long Mynd for local members. Find out what some of our members thought about the day...
The day started off with determining individual pace counts. An exercise that proved incredibly worthwhile as none were as previously known or determined, with one being 25% under. It was explained that weather, load, ground, personal wellbeing etc all affect this figure so check now and again. We continued on to effective timing, an abridged Naismith's rule and the 5 D’s to navigation. The day was split into short manageable legs so individuals could practice their micro navigation and relocation skills. It was amusing when I said “trust your compass” only to discover one being 180’ out, see photo.
The weather was great with thunderstorms to the east and west of us as we basked in glorious sunshine with only a very light drizzle experienced for no more than 10 minutes. You’d think it was planned!
Discussions were amazing and so varied from comparisons of climate change on Earth and Mars, yes Mars and how they are not dissimilar and the changes in magnetic alignment in the geology of the Long Mynd and how it relates to that of Georgia USA. Back down to earth for a minute were clouds ranging from Simpson clouds (fair weather cumulous) to Kelvin Helmholtz and Mammatus. For good measure the good old first aid kit had some decent floor time too.
I finished off with an overview and demo of aspect and angle of slope for awareness purposes for now but something I would like to work on with them at another MTA workshop.
The overriding message really was - use the skills we have and keep practising as you will need them at the most inconvenient moment, such is life on a mountain.
Great people made for a great day.
Written by Phil Davies
MTA Midlands Support Volunteer
All images also provided by Phil.
A Great Day Out!
I left the army in 2006. It was during my time in the army that I completed my ML Training. Since then I chased my career, promotions and money. It was only recently that I decided to actually follow what I love and spend more time outdoors rather in front of a computer. I wanted to give back, so decided to resurrect my love of the outdoors. I re-joined BMC, registered with MTA and amazingly my old training qualifications were still there. I decided to get onto some outdoor days to remind me what would be needed for achieving my ML, the Long Mynd Day on 11 May was my first one. Joining Phil Davies (our volunteer leader for the day), Lee and Darren, I was the last to arrive.
We started out looking at pacing. Over a measured 100m my pacing 25 years ago was 64, I was surprised I could remember it – today it was 63, close. It was soon apparent that we would be visiting and revisiting the 5 D’s over and over. Distance; Direction; Duration; Description; Destination. Distance and Direction I felt I got down pretty accurately. First lesson - duration only told me that maths in my head was no longer my strong point and a crib card would be really useful.
Walking up the ridge made us all realise that we were fitter than the standard duration calculations, it was wiser to add 30s every 10m climb rather than 1 min. Second lesson – adapt to conditions on the ground, weather and fitness of the group on the day – be adaptable.
We were going to walk the next section using pacing and duration. Phil checked we were all happy with our start point – it would be easy to say I wasn’t but I didn’t speak out. It came across from Phil as though we were where we were supposed to be and I didn’t want to be wrong so I kept quiet. As the day went on Phil would mention a few times, when on your ML Assessment to be confident in your ability, in what you do, and make sure you can explain any decisions you make. There will be times on the hills when a member of the group is cold and wet, getting miserable and will question where we are, how long will we be, shouldn’t we be going another way instead. In good weather when you have clear visibility you rely on so much more than the map. This time I stayed quiet, accepting the group thinking that we were where we should be.
We all agreed that we had only walked 500m to the next point instead of 700m, Third Lesson – trust myself, my map and my compass, speak up if I disagree and don’t just go with the crowd. So, when we moved off to the next point and I felt we were off bearing I checked with one of the others compass to make sure mine hadn’t gone off (I should say that Lee’s compass had remagnetised and was pointing south instead of north (Phil has a photo to show this), so I wanted to make sure mine wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t and so this time, I spoke up. We got on the right bearing and hit the mark. The weather forecast for the day was rain all day, thunder and lightning around lunchtime, and yet (as the photos show) we were very lucky. We did cut the route shorter than planned because of the weather closing in and as soon as we diverted, the weather changed again. Part of me was disappointed that we had good weather, if we can do the map reading in poor conditions, we can do it good weather.
After lunch we were given our next point. A large outcrop on the map. Myself and Lee headed off, we got a known point on the map and paced it to the outcrop. Phil was happy we were bang on – however, no large outcrop. Instead a small couple of rocks less than 10% of the size, probably didn’t even warrant being marked on the map. Fourth Lesson – the map can’t always be trusted – a bit of a surprise, but a very obvious lesson on the ground, perhaps not that obvious if we had poor visibility. It was at this point, seeing the lightning storm coming towards us that we adjusted our route and started to head back. We only had around 45 minutes of rain. We still covered angle and aspect of slope as we headed back.
Throughout the day we also covered rock formation of the area, rock dating through sampling and magnetic assessment (photo of three holes) – at the same time discussing that this is the same method being used on Mars (thanks to Phil and his Caltech course). This led to discussion about the thinking in the 90’s that the changing location of the poles was the cause of the last ice age and some experts in the field used this as the reason for global warming (thanks to my Civil Engineering geology lectures from 25+ years ago). We discussed clothing, specifically jackets, materials and different makes, good and bad, gaiters – recycling broken ones as rope protection sleeves. Fifth Lesson – I need to improve my knowledge of various topics to keep the interest of any group I’m leading.
A very successful day, lessons learned, skills improved, skills reminded, exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you Phil for the time you put in, thank you Joby for everything behind the scenes – I can’t wait for my next day out.
Written by Sean MilnerMTA member
Look out for more events coming soon near you -
Browse the workshop programme.