Re: Advice for someone completely new/clueless
Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 10:31 pmHey Will
I feel I ought to give you my advice and experience because not too long ago I was in the same position as you. I'm 22 and graduated from Leeds in the summer. For years I'd been longing for some real adventure, and had always been drawn to mountains, but felt it was too late and that somehow you had to have been brought up as a mountaineer to have any chance of getting up a mountain. Then I realised that my housemate in my final year of uni was pretty adventurous too. He approached me with the idea of walking from Munich to Venice across the Alps in the summer. My first thought was that he must be mad, my second was that if he went, I wanted to go too and with no clear plan, I bought flights that evening.
A few months later, I found myself walking into the mountains with a heavy pack full of equipment and far too many clothes, no experience and no physical training and a very detailed route. Tell the truth I was pretty scared, but I went and did it anyway. There were times when I was extremely bored, or on the verge of turning my back and walking away (I nearly caught a train to Innsbruck). It was physically exhausting and often uncomfortable and dangerous, but the views and the elation and the challenges we overcame and experiences are priceless. When I returned home to England, I found myself getting bored and restless so a few months later I dragged a bunch of friends to Snowdonia and did some fun routes. I've just started indoor rockclimbing and next year hope to get out onto some more mountains (Scotland or Europe) and do some intrepid routes, then if I can afford it, a winter mountaineering course in Scotland
Clearly becoming a rounded mountaineer requires the accumulation of skills and experience which doesn't come overnight, and I am hoping to build this up over the next few years. But as I said, I went off with no training at all and if you can read a map, use your common sense and more importantly really want to do it, there's no reason you can't. Ask around your friends and you might be surprised, there's lots of people who feel the same as you but need a bit of a push.
North Wales is a great place to get hands on (and I mean hands), although Cumbria might be more accessible from Knaresborough. The British mountains might be lower than in Europe but they still offer breath-taking views and real mountaineering challenges for many different levels of experience.
Message me if you want to know any more
Also, that's excellent advice
I feel I ought to give you my advice and experience because not too long ago I was in the same position as you. I'm 22 and graduated from Leeds in the summer. For years I'd been longing for some real adventure, and had always been drawn to mountains, but felt it was too late and that somehow you had to have been brought up as a mountaineer to have any chance of getting up a mountain. Then I realised that my housemate in my final year of uni was pretty adventurous too. He approached me with the idea of walking from Munich to Venice across the Alps in the summer. My first thought was that he must be mad, my second was that if he went, I wanted to go too and with no clear plan, I bought flights that evening.
A few months later, I found myself walking into the mountains with a heavy pack full of equipment and far too many clothes, no experience and no physical training and a very detailed route. Tell the truth I was pretty scared, but I went and did it anyway. There were times when I was extremely bored, or on the verge of turning my back and walking away (I nearly caught a train to Innsbruck). It was physically exhausting and often uncomfortable and dangerous, but the views and the elation and the challenges we overcame and experiences are priceless. When I returned home to England, I found myself getting bored and restless so a few months later I dragged a bunch of friends to Snowdonia and did some fun routes. I've just started indoor rockclimbing and next year hope to get out onto some more mountains (Scotland or Europe) and do some intrepid routes, then if I can afford it, a winter mountaineering course in Scotland
Clearly becoming a rounded mountaineer requires the accumulation of skills and experience which doesn't come overnight, and I am hoping to build this up over the next few years. But as I said, I went off with no training at all and if you can read a map, use your common sense and more importantly really want to do it, there's no reason you can't. Ask around your friends and you might be surprised, there's lots of people who feel the same as you but need a bit of a push.
North Wales is a great place to get hands on (and I mean hands), although Cumbria might be more accessible from Knaresborough. The British mountains might be lower than in Europe but they still offer breath-taking views and real mountaineering challenges for many different levels of experience.
Message me if you want to know any more
lcarreau wrote:Don't make excuses like I did in my life.
Don't get married. Don't even think about getting tied down. Do something for yourself, and you'll be patting yourself on the back for it later.
Also, that's excellent advice
(Or at least try kicking them out of their comfort zones)