The Great Outdoors (UK)

The Mountain Leader

A Practical Manual by Mike Raine

IT SEEMS HARD to start this review of Mountain Leader without talking about the author. Mike is an extremely experience­d Mountainee­ring Instructor, having worked as a senior instructor at a national training centre and on most of the Mountain Training awards, and this really shines through the whole book. And whilst there are many experience­d instructor­s, not everyone has the ability to distil their knowledge in such an easy way as Mike. tone throughout is informal and chatty, rather than a handbook-style series of instructio­ns. And that is one of the important points: this not a handbook. It won’t tell you exactly how to pass your Mountain Leader assessment, but what it does do is prepare you to be a real Mountain Leader, working with real groups, real weather and real expectatio­ns.

The book is split into two parts.

– ‘To be a Mountain Leader’ – covers Clothing and Equipment, Navigation, Weather, and Access, Environmen­t & Conservati­on. is sums up what you will learn on your training course, what you would be expected to know for an assessment, and those little extra bits that might be useful to know. e second part is ‘Being a Mountain Leader’, which takes a much deeper dive into how to actually do the job, and the so-called ‘so skills’ around leadership, group management and decision making. is is usually the hard part because it can’t be learnt from a textbook, and needs to be developed over time spent doing the job. But this is where all the little boxes headed ‘Top tips from Mountain Leaders’ come in. ese shared stories and handy hints can help short-cut some mistakes you might make, and allow you to learn from others, especially if you’re not in a position where you know many Mountain Leaders and can have these conversati­ons. Gathering this info not just from Mike but also many of his colleagues must contain the learning and experience of many decades, if not centuries!

Unlike other Mountain Leader suggested handbooks, Mike has included topics that many people still shy away from. e sections on menstruati­on, the menopause and working with ethnic minority groups are really useful additions for people who may have no experience of this, and how they can approach these situations. Remember, when you’re a Mountain

Leader, you need to be able to give advice on how to deal with periods during a day’s walk or overnight expedition, regardless of whether you’ve ever had one!

Having come through the Mountain Training awards myself, and now in a position where I work on Summer Mountain Leader courses, I would highly recommend this book to anyone considerin­g the award. As well as the vast amount of useful informatio­n, the photos are great for highlighti­ng key points; and all the input from other instructor­s gives a really broad picture. e sections for trainers and assessors are not just useful for them, but also gives candidates an idea of what the assessor might be looking for or how to approach a part of their assessment. Finally, Mike recognises there are lots of ways to do most things, and is open to the fact that not everyone will agree with absolutely everything in the book, which is a very healthy attitude. I’m certain we’d have a few things to debate!