A few years ago when I was still actively volunteering for the BMC I was involved, with a lovely group of people, on an update of their Green Guides. We tried to pull together some of the excellent work done previously on regional Green Guides to produce a Green Guide for Groups of Climbers and a Green Guide for Groups of Walkers. The titles did take some thinking about. We didn’t want to tarnish those traditionally thought of as groups, typically a group under instruction and hopefully being led in a sound manner. We thought that any group of climbers could be perceived as problematical if not following best practice. So rather than the guidance being limited to those introducing ‘groups’ to climbing it is aimed at any climbing group be it a club, a group under instruction or just a group of friends.
To anyone reading this then the contents of both leaflets will be common sense, but clearly there are people operating on our crags and hills that do not have the same background and training that we do. If these booklets can be any help to you in teaching others, then you can download them for free and distribute them as widely as you possible can.
We did ask around the BMC area committees for recent examples of bad practice. We received nothing contemporary, just old tales of woe. Yet I myself have recently seen poor behaviour here on the hills and mountains Snowdonia and on a recent trip to Mull, I know I am not alone in this. There has recently been concern raised on social media forums about pre-rigging of crags and the hogging of classic routes on popular crags by ‘groups’.
In many ways the Green Guidance for Challenge Events is a better publication. It goes into more detail about issues in the hills and explains things clearly to those who may not know any better. I think it’s a great starting point for discussions when leading groups or when training others to lead groups. This is also available as a free download. see below
Also well worth a look…