Dave Willcox - 178582

Today didn't go quite to plan.
The plan was for myself, Sophie and Joe to have some fun climbs with some leads for me and Sophie. However when Joe arrived he had brought two friends who had not climbed before.
The personal climbing session quickly turned into an instruction / supervision session when I observed Joe helping the two friends into alpine harnesses; but they were on backwards. When I brought this up Joe thought that the gear loop was the belay loop - this was when I decided to change mine and Sophie's plans so the new climbers wouldn't die. We both belayed the two climbers so they had a go of climbing and they seemed to enjoy it. After a couple more safety issues were resolved Joe and the couple went off to do some bouldering. Sophie and I stayed and did some personal lead climbs which was good - Sophie managed to clip the rope into both carabiners at the lower off, but in such a way as to snag the rope and it wasn't budging. With her arms fatiguing she started to panic over not coming down but I instructed her to rest on the rope which she did. I then instructed her to unclip the rope from one of the two carabiners - preferably the snapgate. She managed to do this and she got back to the ground safely.
Having finished climbing, I spoke to the staff member who signed the two climbers up to make sure they hadn't put false information on their forms (this was all ok), so my concern was with Joe being their supervisor. I spoke to Joe after the session and pointed out that he is not yet ready to be supervising anyone due to him being so new to climbing. I pointed out some of the big issues but in a positive / supportive way and he seemed to agree. Tonight's session could have gone very wrong, but Sophie and I felt that we both did the right thing at the time.