"What?! We start when?! That's worse than an Alpine start!"... And so went the conversation last night, the night before my visit to the Primary School in Leeds where my sister teaches. The reason for my trip was to talk to Year 6 about some of my mountain experiences, all totally off the cuff and based around a few (or a lot) of photos I'd just bunged into a slideshow with some videos to punctuate my main points. I had no idea what I was going to say, or how I was going to say it, and hadn't had time to put together a 'university-style' presentation; but what I did have was a few ideas about what mountaineering has done for me and how it's completely changed my life, more ofthen than not for the better. If I could try and get that across, then I'd hopefully be alright...
The talk started at around half 9 and I was worried it would only last until 9:40, but armed with more pictures than I thought I had and every bit of kit that was randomly sitting in the boot of my car, I ended up rattling through stories and experiences I'd almost totally forgotten I'd had! An hour and a half later, the talk finished with some very interesting questions from some obviously quite interested kids! Excellent!!! I was worried I might have bored them senseless!
The talk involved a slideshow of my experiences in the Alps (See 'hypos at height' article on my blog...) and in Scotland as well as some training pics and videos from the recent Scottish Tooling Series dry-tooling competitions; as well as a look at the sort of equipment I use in the mountains and a whole load of follow-up questions from the class! But the main reason for the talk was that, in attendance, was one young diabetic as well as the diabetic teacher who were interested in that aspect of my climbing and mountaineering. A MASSIVE thank you to them for getting me out of my bed to come and talk - it was brilliant to see so many psyched youngsters learning about the environment that I mess about in and waste too many hours to count thinking about! It was brilliant!
I also realise I haven't written up anything about the Steall Falls climb - basically it was one of the best climbing experiences I've had in Scotland; as I went, in one day, from feeling unsure about my current ability on ice, to leading and virtually soloing my lead pitches at speed, feeling totally at one with the ice and the conditions! An amazing experience! The diabetes was kept at bay by using some 'lucozade-gel', which I took before the climb and kept me totally in the zone all day, even when standing around waiting for my climbing partner Keith to climb his pitches in freezing conditions! I also spent about an hour chatting to a stag within a few meters of me waiting for my climbing partners to arrive, which will go down as one of my favourite nature moments of all time!