I’m a fully qualified International Mountain Leader and UK Summer Mountain Leader and an Aspirant UK Winter Mountain Leader. I’m a full member of BAIML (British Association of International Mountain Leaders) and the MTA (Mountain Training Association).
A little bit more about me, I was a bit of a latecomer to the outdoors, although holidays with my parents and sister usually involved trips to Yorkshire and other parts of the UK, the walks were short and on good paths.
When I was 16 I joined BT as an apprentice and the normal induction for apprentices was a week on an “Outward Bounds” course. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the camping, abseiling, walking and canoeing on the Isle of Purbeck, it took me another 8 years before I finally joined a Mountaineering Club and started climbing and walking all over the UK and overseas.
Since joining a Mountaineering Club, I have constantly sought to improve my outdoor skills. In 2008 a friend and I booked onto an International School of Mountaineering (ISM) Alpinism course, and a love of Alpine climbing was born (added to my addiction to skiing which started in 1991). Since 2009 I’ve used the services of Andy Perkins (whose photo of me you can see in my profile picture) a British Mountain Guide based in Chamonix.
Although I've walked, climbed and trekked across the UK and overseas for the last 20 years, I took my Mountain Leader Summer qualification in 2016 and then followed that with the International Mountain Leader qualification which I passed in 2018. I currently freelance as a Mountain Leader in the UK and hope to use my International Mountain Leader in the next year.