Echoes by Nick Bullock

Author:Nick Bullock [Bullock, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906148546
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Published: 2012-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

Back on course, everyone had another turn at navigating and this time we all did much better. Later, in a quick debrief, Nick asked me about the navigation error and I told him I was pretty sure we had gone wrong but didn’t want to get anyone into bother.

“You should have spoken up,” he said. “That’s what being a leader is about.”

I knew he was right, but it wasn’t life or death and being loyal to the group was what I was about. Maybe my constant concern about not being the right material for the winter award was right?

The second day continued in similar vein. Banks asked me to take him to a small feature on a single contour on the map, which I did with confidence. Standing in a shallow windblown scoop in the hillside, he asked me if I was certain we were there.

“Yes,” I said proudly. He then asked the group and some of them pointed to a feature about twenty-five metres to the right.

“Okay, do you still think we are where you say?”

“Yes I do.”

“Well I think it’s that feature over there.”

“Okay,” I said, “prove it.” Which was impossible, and Nick agreed. You wanted assertiveness so now you’ve got it, I thought, but I was disappointed some of my fellow students didn’t appear to share my sense that we were all for one and one for all. If this is what instructing is about, I thought to myself, then you can forget it.

Returning from the expedition, back in the warmth of the hotel, we were called one by one to receive our results. When my time came I still had no idea of how I would fare. Mike Turner, the course director, known by all as Twid, shut the door behind me and asked how I thought things had gone. I told him I knew I had made a few mistakes but, all things considered, thought I’d done okay. Twid then told me that of all the candidates on the assessment, I had been the most difficult one for them to judge, but they had eventually decided to defer me.

Twid made his case by recalling several of my minor mistakes. As far as I could tell, everyone had made similar mistakes but I knew they had passed, so I was confused. Twid then suggested that if I spent several days on the hill supervising groups under the leadership of one of the Brenin instructors, I could come back for a day and easily pass. The penny dropped. I realised I was being deferred because I lacked experience of working in the outdoor industry. I didn’t have that day-to-day experience with groups on the hill. I had no experience or understanding of the kind of people a winter mountain leader would take up Scottish mountains.

I had to agree with Twid. I was a driven climber who loved mountains and climbing. I didn’t have the right attitude or skills to be a group guardian, shepherding the inexperienced. But

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