Time

It's been a while since writing anything down and some stuff has happened.  Post Nepal, I probably fell into a little bit of a life review period .. I am conscious that this sounds a little bit self-indulgent, but I promise it wasn't.  In reality, I knew I wanted to take a step back from the corporate world for a bit and to my own surprise (and others!) I wanted to spend more time in the hills and indeed work towards getting some mountain skills and leadership qualifications. And so, after much thinking and talking and with great support I find myself on a 6 month 'sabbatical' until October at least.

This year I have two 'big' treks planned.  In June I head to the Atlas Mountains to climb Morocco's 7 highest summits in 7 days and then in August I am heading to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro.  This means I have to double down on my fitness again and so double training days are back in the calendar with a good mix of gym, HIIT and zone 2 running in there.

In 2023 I undertook Mountains Skills training - basically fundamental skills for being competent in navigation out on the hills.  However, I never did the assessment that goes with it and if I want to develop further in mountain leading, well I needed to get that sorted.  So, one of the first items on my 'things to do during sabbatical' list was to do and pass that assessment, and thankfully I have just ticked that one off.  Later in the year I will move into mountain leading training.  I also completed Lowland Leader training, this is sort of the much smaller sibling of mountain leading, and will undertake the assessment later in the Summer.  I'll pen a couple of blogs on those two - now that I have the time!