On Friday 15 May 1998, I began my Single Pitch Award training. But that three day course didn’t happen in isolation.
A few weeks earlier, I’d helped lead a school expedition to Knoydart. The weekend before the course, I’d travelled to Derbyshire to lead climbs at Harborough Rocks. The weekend after, I was attempting the Welsh 3000s with Martin and Tim.
At nineteen, I had just discovered that I didn’t need to wait for someone else to organise my adventures. I could catch a train, arrange a climbing day, agree to a mountain challenge. That freedom felt complete.
But the SPA forced me to grapple with what I’d only half understood: freedom and independence weren’t the whole story.
The Single Pitch Award was asking me to make a fundamental shift.
Until then, most of my development had been about becoming more independent. This course was about learning what independence actually meant: taking responsibility for other people.
When I climbed for myself, my decisions affected me and my climbing partner. When I began working with beginners, those decisions affected people who might have little knowledge of the risks involved. They were trusting the knots I checked, the anchors I chose, the instructions I gave and the decisions I made when circumstances changed.
That was a very different form of leadership.
This wasn’t my first experience of the Mountain Leader Training Boards system.
The previous summer, at eighteen, I had completed my Mountain Leader Training at Plas y Brenin. That week had introduced me to navigation, leadership positioning, route choice, emergency procedures and managing groups in mountain terrain.
The main feedback had been simple:
Get more experience in the hills.
The Single Pitch Award felt like part of the same journey but asking a different question. Mountain Leader training had taught me to think about people moving through a landscape. The SPA asked me to think about people attached to ropes, using equipment they might not understand and trusting the systems I had constructed for them.
The course ran for three days with three very different venues: The Roaches in Staffordshire, Beacon Hill in Leicestershire and the indoor climbing wall at Warwick University. It was delivered by Mike Reynolds.
My logbook records the weather simply as:
“Fine and dry.”
At the Roaches, I began to see climbing through an instructor’s eyes. Mike watched not just how I climbed but how I decided. Did I choose appropriate routes? Did I place protection sensibly? Were my belays organised? Were we aware of loose rock, difficult descents, or other people using the crag?
These were questions I’d never consciously asked myself. I’d made these decisions intuitively, driven by what I could do. Now I had to imagine making them for someone else.
A route might be suitable for me but unsuitable for a nervous beginner. A belay might be strong but awkward to supervise. The course was teaching us that a technically correct decision was not always the most appropriate one.
At Beacon Hill, the shorter climbs and accessible upper areas let us focus on something different: positioning and awareness. Could I see both the climber and the belayer? Could I intervene quickly? Was the rope protected from rubbing over an edge?
For an experienced climber, stepping over the edge of an abseil can feel routine. For a beginner, it may be the most frightening moment of the day. The instructor needed to understand more than the rope system. They needed to understand the person using it.
The indoor wall at Warwick allowed us to focus even more directly on what mattered: noticing what was actually happening. Someone might fit a harness incorrectly. A belayer might take their hand away from the rope. A climber might misunderstand a command. Another person might begin climbing while the instructor was distracted.
The challenge was not knowing how to correct the problem. It was noticing that it was happening.
Mike’s course report was almost as brief as my logbook:
“The syllabus was fully covered in practical ways including lead climbing and the indoor wall was fully utilised for group situations.”
Yet the underlying lesson was about much more than techniques.
When leading a climb, my attention naturally narrowed. I thought about the next move, the next piece of protection and the rope running below me.
When supervising beginners, my attention had to widen.
I needed to notice the climber, the belayer, the rest of the group, the equipment, the weather and the venue itself. I also needed to recognise what people were not saying: uncertainty, fear or a lack of understanding hidden behind a confident nod.
A competent climber can concentrate intensely on the route ahead. A competent instructor must somehow concentrate on everything.
Individual climbing rewards concentration. Group instruction demands awareness.
The course also made me think about the difference between performing a skill and teaching it.
I might know how to put on a harness, tie into the rope or operate a belay device. That did not automatically mean I could explain it to a beginner. Teaching required the action to be broken into understandable stages. It also required me to check that the person genuinely understood, rather than merely asking whether they did.
Different people needed different explanations. Some wanted to know exactly how the equipment worked. Others learned by watching and copying. Some understood the technique but needed reassurance before they trusted it.
An instructor had to respond to all of them without losing control of the wider session. This may have been one of the biggest differences between being a climber and becoming an instructor. Personal competence could remain largely internal. Instruction had to be communicated.
Completing the three day course did not make me a qualified instructor.
Like Mountain Leader training, the SPA followed a pattern of training, consolidation and assessment. I completed the training in May 1998 and attended assessment in August 1999.
That time mattered. Rope systems that initially required careful thought gradually became familiar. Organisation became smoother. Decisions became less theoretical.
More importantly, real experience brought situations that could not be reproduced perfectly on a training course: nervous participants, crowded crags, unclear communication, changing weather and plans that needed to be abandoned.
My logbook was not simply a record of climbs completed. It was evidence that my judgement was developing.
The message echoed the advice I had received after Mountain Leader training: get more experience. Neither course suggested that leadership could be acquired in a week or a weekend. The real learning happened afterwards, through days spent making decisions and discovering which apparently simple situations were not simple at all.
Looking back, the most significant lesson was probably a change in where I placed my attention.
As a developing lead climber, I was learning to focus: on the rock, the route, my protection and the next move.
As a developing instructor, I needed to do the opposite.
I needed to look outward.
At nineteen, I was still learning how to lead a climb. Over those three days in May 1998, I began learning how to lead people. And that second lesson: the one that lasted fifteen months and beyond, changed what responsibility actually meant.