With the first serious snow of the winter now hitting the Scottish hills, the dates have been announced for this year’s Mountain Safety Lectures. This year’s line up of speakers for the popular evenings include 7-summit mountaineer Di Gilbert, Mountain Rescue veteran David ‘Heavy’ Whalley, and MCoS Mountain Safety Officer Heather Morning among others.
The evenings are free and will be running at each of the following locations with the first kicking off on 28 December.
The Clachaig Inn, Glencoe (Tuesday evenings)
The Mountain Cafe, Aviemore (Wednesday evenings)
Various Tiso Stores (Wednesday/Thursday evenings)
A spokesperson for the Mountaineering Council of Scotland (MCofS) which organises the evenings said, “The focus of the lectures is to entertain and educate on winter mountain safety. In order to deliver this, an inspiring array of speakers has been chosen who are guaranteed to provide an entertaining night out. All the speakers have spent many years in the mountains and will draw upon their own experiences to illustrate hard lessons learnt. Each presentation will last approx 45 minutes and there will be opportunity at the end of each evening for any questions. Whether you are a hardened climber, or up in the Highlands for your first winter experience, you can ensure a good night out and learn something new.”
The first evening will be held at the Mountain Cafe in Aviemore (food available at £10 per head, must be booked in advance with the Cafe), with Simon Steer.
Simon is an experienced mountaineer who is also the Deputy Team Leader of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team. In his fifteen years of mountain rescue, he has been involved in a great number of incidents and his recounting of some of these, supplemented with a few minor epics of his own, makes for an entertaining talk.
For details of this talk as well as dates and venues for the whole series which runs until the 28 February see the MCofS website.