Senior Games - Bouldering at Cuckoo Rock

After Teaching Some more Kayaking sessions in the pool this morning I teamed up with Mr Jackson to take the Senior Games climbing group for an outdoor bouldering session.

Making use of the beautiful weather we headed for Cuckoo Rock which is about 20 minutes walk from the car park at Norsworthy Bridge within Dartmoor National park.

All of the students were keen to get outside after many weeks visiting the local indoor climbing walls. Many of the students climbed well this afternoon with Alex Moore completing a V7 problem that he has been working on for a little while. When 4.15pm came around it was a shame to have to head back to the car park but we had been blessed with beautiful weather, especially for february!

Next week, weather dependant we plan to go to sheepstor for a top-roping session.

Mr Brice

Institute of Outdoor Learning Conference - South West Region - 2012

It was a really constructive day today at the Institute of Outdoor Learning's South-west conference. Mr Jackson and I attended three very good workshops. The first was a session on climbing for people with disabilities. We were able to get to grips with a bag of specialist equipment supplied by the guys at Equal Adventure.

The second workshop was all about updates in health and safety and the move from AALS to Adventuremark, a very worthwhile session delivered by Pat Dollard from Kernow Training.

For the third workshop I decided to attend the "safe use of knives and saws" workshop. This was a really enjoyable session delivered by Richard Irvine. The workshop gave me some new bushcraft ideas and some useful tools to add to the tool bag. We spent the session making whistles from Elder, wooden butter knives from Hazel and learning how to effectively cleave using a bill hook.

Overall a really successful day, thanks to all the guys at IOL SW for all their hard work.  

Mr Brice

Orienteering and Gold D of E Training

Another busy day at Plymouth College. The day started with a few jobs in the office before delivering a lesson on bearings for year 8 maths and an orienteering lesson for year 9 PE.
After lunch I headed out to Norsworthy Bridge with one of the Gold Duke of Edinburgh groups to work on their navigation in preparation for their practise expedition. We made our way up on to Down Tor where we spent time translating the map to the ground and navigating to small features.

Mr Brice

Team Building and Climbing

Today I have spent the morning delivering team building and problem solving to the year 7's and 8's as part of their PE program and the afternoon consisted of a trip to Dart Rock with the students who have opted for climbing for their games session.
After dinner I took another group of students to help out at the Plymouth and District Special Olympics, a community project set up to give disabled adults the chance to be active and try new things.

Mr Brice

Kayaking, Climbing and Orienteering

A very productive day for the outdoor education department today.

My day started with an orienteering session for year nine girls PE. The girls were super competitive and spent the whole session running around the school site looking for the control points. Four out of the five groups managed to complete the whole course within a forty minute period.

During the students lunch hour we ran another kayak rolling clinic for a small number of students. As you can see by the video Alex has now successfully learnt to roll the kayak from a pre set up position and also managed to roll up after being tipped over backwards. This exercise is meant to disorientate the paddler, which makes the process more realistic.

The day finished with the regular tuesday after school climbing club. Jay usually runs this so it was great for me to cover him and see just how many good young climbers we have.

Mr Brice

Day 6 - A wander in Glen Nevis

A waterfall near where we started in Glen Nevis - as we followed the path alongside the river Nevis, we saw many waterfalls and rock formations on the way to the Steall waterfall.

Toby and George admiring the views from our riverside path...

As we reached the top of this hill the Steall waterfall came into sight - here Jay admires the view!

George is the first of us to cross the wire bridge, in order reach the waterfall and snack time!

 

Abi tentatively crosses the wire bridge, scared that I will step onto the wire and wobble her off.

Today we went to Glen Nevis, and followed the riverside path to the Steall waterfall and back again. After reaching Ben Nevis, we were all in need of an easier walk, and many of us still needed to pack our things and tidy the chalets ready for our departure...the walk comprised many lovely riverside views, and according to Mr. Starks many kayaking opportunities! Unfortunately, fairly early on in the walk I managed to sink my foot into a bog, much to the amusement of the rest of the group...and had to put up with a squelching foot for the rest of the walk. It was, however, a lovely walk and a lovely way to spend our last day in Scotland!

Day 5 - Ben Nevis

We began trudging along the path up Ben Nevis.

We continued to trudge...

and then trudged some more.

After much trudging we finally reached the summit.

And then came the long trudge back down.

Today we set out to make the 1344m climb to the summit of Ben Nevis. Having been woken much before the crack of dawn and loaded our kit into the land rover. We arrived at the bottom of Ben Nevis as the first daylight began to show and made our way through the rain to the footpath that would take us to the highest point in the UK. Two and a half hours into our trek the rain was falling upwards and we came across the first snow and ice patches. By this point the wind had picked up and the temperatures had dropped, causing the whole experience to feel silghtly more hardcore. As we continued the snow became thicker and we got out our ice axes before heading on up. The path zigged, zagged and then zigged once more before straightening out and disappearing altogether. The ground had leveled out a little and we now had to navigate our way along a line of cairns protrudng from the snow in near white-out conditions. We successfully reached the summit and enjoyed several minutes of triumph before the cold set in once more. we then quickly shivered our way back past the cairns and down the mountin away from the snow, ice and wind. Several sandwiches and caramel bars later we were back at the bottom of the mountain, we had won!
Us one; Nevis nil.

Matt Andrews (VI Form)

Day 4 - Stob Corie nan Lochan

Today we went to Glencoe, we started by walking up a path by a river for about 2 hours. After this period of time we reached the snow line, as the mist descended we learnt some micro nav. We passed 3 small lochans and then proceded to the deeper snow which was situated on the side of a steep slope. Once there, we learnt how to dig an avalanche test pit to test the snow pack stability. After discovering the snow was stable, we then started to probe the snow to find deep snow drifts. We found areas that were deeper than 2 metres and then started to dig snow caves. This was unsucessful as we hit rock and our snow caves turned into snow tunnels. After, we then practiced our ice axe arrests by throwing ourselves down hill and attempting to stop ourselves. We then began our desent home, on the way back we had a chance to practice our crampon skills on a steep, icy, slope. We reached the Land Rover and went home.

Rhidian Caradine (VI Form)

Day 3 - Rock and Ice

Today we went to The Ice Factor for a Rest Day. The ice factor has the biggest indoor ice climbing facility in the world.We were fortunate enough to have one and a half hours in the freezer with Mr Starks learning the basics of ice climbing. It was a great experience and really helped to develop our dry skills aswell. After the freezer we used the ice factors dry climbing wall facilities, which included some small and large walls with great features and included an articulted section. Abi and Libby developed their skills on the top rope and George and myself developed our leading skills by practicing our falls and finishing with a tough route. It was a great day and we all finished with some bouldering.

Toby Hall (VI Form)

Day 2 - Summit of Aonach Mor

 Practising the use of crampons

 Walking up past the freezing level

 Navigation to the summit

 When navigation becomes a bit tougher!

 On the summit of Aonach Mor

The day started with a walk up to the snowline from the top of the gondola where on a large patch of ice we practised using our crampons. We then continued on towards the summit, where with just under 1km to go we were split into pairs and given the challenge of navigating through the mist whilst avoiding the vertical corrie walls to our left! After reaching the summit we then retraced our steps and continued down the mountain on the same route we ascended the day before. This was pretty challenging with all of us needing our crampons to to get down the icy slopes. We then had a little more practice climbing up and down some ice flows with our axes and campons before heading back to the gondola and boarding the fun bus, heading back to the chalet shattered but happy with ourselves.

George Monk (VI Form)