SPA (single pitch award)
I just did my SPA training at Plas-y-Brenin, two days
in SUNNY Snowdonia in January would you believe. For those that don’t
know, SPA stands for single pitch award and is a qualification that allows
you to surpervise and teach rock climbing on single pitch crags (and
climbing walls). For multi pitch crags and teaching lead climbing, an
MIA (mountaineering instructor award) is required.
To get a SPA you must firstly have some rock climbing
experience, 12 months minimum and 15 lead climbs, some of which must be at
severe standard. You then do a 2 day training course (which I just
completed), then you go away and get more climbing in (40 lead climbs) and
experience of supervising and teaching. You then do a 2 day
assessment. When it comes to assessment, the 40 lead climbs rule can get
bent a bit, it all depends on your experience. Quoting a PYB instructor “You
can get a lot of the climbs done in in a single weekend at Stanage, but if
you’ve abseiled into the bottom of Wen Zawn (A Dream of White Horses), that
shows that you know what you’re doing, and counts for a lot.”
You hear horror stories of people turning up for SPA
training without even knowing how to belay, they get sent there by centres
wanting trained staff on the cheap. Fortunately, out of the 6 of us on
the course, all bar one had a lot of climbing experience, the one guy who
didn’t have much had a lot of walking and scrambling experience though.
Between us, we had two instructors.
Day one was at Tremadog to assess personal climbing
skills. This started off by looking over different types of harness and
different tying on methods. Then it was practicing gear placements by
finding a crack and getting as much gear as possible into it, then go round
and mark each one on a scale of 1-10. After this, the good bit –
climbing. It was all lead climbing and the instructors kept popping up
on a rope at the side of you to check on your gear placements and belay
construction. This was when the free entertainment started.
There was this crazy Israeli, who led off up a VS, 15 feet up he puts his
first placement in, then shouts down “Have you got me.” Next minute
he’s off. We all think he just fell. Goes he up another 15’,
puts some gear in “Have you got me”. Craig who’s belaying looks
puzzled but says “yes”. The guy then proceeds to jump off. He’s
testing his gear placements by jumping off onto them! At this point
Martin, the instructor, sees what’s happening and nearly has kittens.
If the gear had pulled during “testing”, he’d have decked from 30’.
Martin had to have another word with him later, he was casually walking
along the edge of the cliff, hands in pockets, not a care in the world.
When Martin told him this was ever so slightly dangerous, he just turns
round and says “If you die, so what?”, Martin says “I’ll lose my job.”
That said, the guy was a really good climber and made short work of a HVS 5b
lead. After that it was back to PYB for tea and cakes, then into the
wall to practice running a wall session. This involved, warming up,
coaching, protecting “small people” on a bouldering wall, belaying and
methods of making walls more interesting.
The next day was spent practicing setting up anchors
for top ropes and releasable abseils. Then belaying and sorting out
various problems such as stuck climbers, hair jammed in an abseil device,
climbing past the top anchor etc. etc. etc. Next to us were a group of kids
out for a days climbing and abseiling so we got to see how a climbing
session is handled in practice. We also got to practice using various
different belay devices.
Most of the stuff covered was pretty basic and not new
to me at all, that said, I did pick up quite a few little tips. For
instance, there’s a lot said about larks footing two slings together.
PYB have just done some pull tests on these and in all cases the carabiners
broke before the larks foot. Thus, larks footing slings together is
acceptable, but, with a little rearrangement, you can turn a larks foot into
a reef knot which is much stronger. We spent 10 minutes trying not
only to equalise 4 anchors with one big overhand knot, but also to equalise
the lengths of the loops left. Waste of time. Not only can the
trailing loops be of unequal length but you only need to clip the krab
through one of them anyway. Also learnt about friend placements.
In a horizontal crack, put the two outer cams on the bottom, not the top,
its more stable, and don’t put a friend behind a flake, the forces generated
by the cams are enormous and can easily explode the flake. And one
more thing, I set up what I thought was a perfectly acceptable anchor for a
top rope, a reasonable but not brilliant #5 nut, and a #3 hex in crack
between a rather large block and the mountain. “If this was assessment
I’d be worried about that” said Martin, “Its absolutely fine for you, but if
you’re responsible for a lot of other people, you need better.”
However, running the top rope through 2 krabs is regarded as over the top,
and I’ve seen you lot do that on more than one occasion. And finally,
finally, the record for the most slings in a single belay during SPA
assessment is 17 m, think about it, even between two of you, have you got
that many slings?
Anyway, now
I’ve got to go off and get some practice in supervising and teaching, and
also to get more lead climbs in, then it’ll be off to assessment, at a
guess, about 12 –18 months from now.
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