Hugh Thornbery - 10539

I started climbing and mountaineering in 1969 aged 14 whilst a pupil at Denstone College a school on the edge of the Peak District. As I progressed I began to introduce and instruct younger pupils and gained real satisfaction in doing so. My interest in climbing led to a two year job at the YHA Services climbing shop in Birmingham where a chance encounter led me to start leading young offenders in outdoor activities for Wolverhampton Social Services. in I gained exemption from the training and log book period for the Mountain Leader Summer award and successfully completed my assessment at the Towers OPC in 1989. A year later I gained the Wolverhampton Council multi pitch leaders qualification again at the Towers. I continued to lead rock climbing and day and multi day mountain walking expeditions for young people until the mid '90's. During this time I ran a number of introductory sessions for aspirant adult mountain leaders taking novices through training to equip them with the skills and experience to register for the ML (Summer) award.

I was an active climber and mountaineer from 1969 until c2001. I climbed regularly in the UK in summer and winter conditions, and in my early 20's had four alpine seasons in the Swiss Alps and Dolomites, expeditions to Acrtic Norway and the Kishtwar Himalaya, sport climbing in Spain, France, Italy and Mallorca and multi pitch routes in Yosemite. I climbed regularly at E2/E3 into my 40's, onsighting many classic routes at that grade.

I started climbing again in 2016 introducing my stepdaughter to the sport and have introduced her and my wife to outdoor climbing mostly on the West Cork and Swanage sea cliffs. This experience combined with my semi-retirement has led to my registration for the CWI award as I'm keen to continue introducing people to the activity that has been such a big part of my life.

My DLOG has details of all indoor climbing from September 2020 when I enrolled on the CWI Award. I've imported my UK Climbing Log. I don't have a full record of all the routes I've climbed since 1969 until my temporary retirement from climbing c2001. The record since restarting is complete. I have no accurate records of the routes done between 1969 and 1973 whcih were mostly on Derbyshire and Staffordshire Gritstone.