Adam is a local outdoor instructor who is preparing to do his SPA (Single Pitch Award – Rock Climbing) assessment next month. This will be a 2 day assessment, looking at his personal climbing abilities but, even more importantly, to ensure that he can set up climbs and abseils safely for other people and manage groups appropriately.
Adam asked if I could spare him a day to go out and comment on what he’s doing as part of his preparations for next month. To be honest, it doesn’t take much to pursued me to go climbing for the day, so we headed to Pontesford Rocks for a play!
After a while trying to get our heads around the guidebook (not as easy as it may sound) and getting it to make sense of the crags in front of us, we opted to start the day off with a 2 pitch traditional route. This doesn’t really fall within the remit of the SPA, but it looked inviting and give us the chance to look at gear placement.
We then spent a fair chunk of time looking at setting up bottom ropes and abseils. There were a few tips I was able to give him on these, which I hope will be helpful. However, I also picked up a very nice idea from Adam which will come in very useful on abseil setups. As they say – “every day’s a school day”!
After discussions about rescue techniques, we figured it was time for another climb, so had a play on the bottom rope that Adam had just set up. It started with a very simple scramble, but came to a much more challenging chimney which proved to be rather a tight squeeze with an awkward move.
One of the skills in the SPA syllabus which often gets overlooked is that of ‘leading a novice’. It’s not particularly difficult, but does require you to plan ahead and brief your novice(s) properly – otherwise things can get out of hand quite quickly. We had a good chat about the different ways you could organise this scenario, then had a play with it on flat ground, before putting it into practice on a proper climb.
As always, it was fantastic to get out climbing. I certainly value the experience, and I hope that it will prove to be a useful day for Adam as he gets ready for his assessment. Good luck!
