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MIC Assessment 2003
Mountain Instructor Certificate (MIC) Assessment 2003…by Bren Whelan
The Mountaineering Instructors Certificate (MIC) is the highest instructional qualification available in Ireland and the UK. Award holders are qualified to instruct, train and assess all aspects of rock climbing, mountaineering summer / winter and winter climbing.
This is a reflection on my assessment at the Lodge, plus some useful information (I hope?) for the keen and sweaty!
Between training and assessment…
Don’t mess about; if you want to get that nice yellow page in your logbook then you need to start working early. Do as much preparation as you can outside of the winter season. Get to grips with winter rope work systems and sort out your parallel rope work on the warm sunny rock with two students who can bask in the sunshine while you sort out the tangles. Get changeovers slick and quick as well as the organizational skills that go along with moving swiftly and efficiently in winter. This sort of mileage can help make an assessors x-ray eyes seem less penetrating?
Crank up your short roping skills with one or two students and work on things like multiple lowers down sections of broken ground, also practice abseiling off routes with clients and its variations.
This period of preparation is also perfect for fine-tuning how much equipment you really need on the various days. Stream line your equipment, it’s not an assessment of how much you can carry or how much bright and shiny gear you own. So leave the expedition rucksack in the closet and pack everything small and compact.
Of course the assessment is a lot about the hard skills you need as an MIC, but don’t miss the other softer side of it. Get current with coaching processes and how students learn, so you can meet the needs of their individual learning style. The canoeing world have been taking fantastic steps forward in this area and plenty of AMI members are level 5 coaches, so track them down and get talking (bring your wallet!).
Work on your diversionary tactics i.e. the verbal banter that fills in the quiet times. You can upload all sorts of good info on geology, flora / fauna, place names, mountain and climbing history (this list is endless!) into your head which you can fire out at anytime.
Read the MIC booklet and be very familiar with it and what is required of you as an MIC.
Now for the fun part…
The assessment is 4 days, the 5th day is built in for bad weather and debriefs. If the weather hasn’t thrown a spanner in the works then you receive the result but not your debrief on the Thursday night (just so it can all sink in!). There are no written papers, night nav’s, lecturettes or snow holes (unless you really screw up!).
Have your logbook up to date and as fat as it can be, not with flowers, photos or stories! Fill it up with a broad range of winter related work and play days, double the minimums and then some! Spend as much time as possible on the bigger terrain, the Northern Corries are super, but aim for a lot more variety.
Oh, yeah…have your first aid cert with you, photocopies are fine, but make sure it has a completion and expiry date on it, make sure you have all the paper completed, in order to avoid that painful technical deferment!
Day 1…General Mountaineering
9.00am kick off. We meet with George Mc and Jules Fincham. The boys are nice and friendly and lay it all out for us. George explains that there’ll be no tricks up their sleeves or any screw gate magic during the week and that all scenarios will have a clear start and finish. Plus clarification can always be sought on what you are being asked to do (hum! sounds fair!)
We’re given about 8 mins 30 seconds to get packed and on the fun bus to Coire Cas. As we pull up something comes floating into my mind, someone once said…‘they can tell who is going to pass or fail just by the way you get ready at the minibus’, but that’s just bull?
As we make our way towards Sneacdha, George pulls out his mental probe and starts to use it on our tiny little minds. It’s straightforward approach stuff; he’s trying to see how aware we are of the terrain, snow pack and its relationship with the weather.
Stopping at the flat ice and this time George wants action not words. He’s looking for us to demo techniques that relate to the terrain e.g. ‘good role model stuff”. The stuff that sets MIC’s apart from the mere WML (whoops, sorry!).
Moving up broken ground we blend into route finding some scenarios i.e. broken crampon, a client unable to complete an exposed move etc. Some blue-sky nav takes us to the top of the Feithe Buidhe, looking at short roping and safe travel under the Lum, from there it’s up to Coire Domhain and on over towards the top of the Vent, for lowers down that nameless bowl between the Fiaciall ridge and Lochan. Then it’s over to the broken ground below the Twin Burns here we do 4 very fast pitches up grade 1ish ground, dragging 2 bodies. A quick lower and some short roping see us heading back to the car park for 16.45.
Individual feedback from George finishes what was a very pleasant day and he stuck to his word and didn’t pull any funny stuff.
If you want to settle into the assessment week then make sure you can cruise through day one. You need to be comfortable on grade 1 / 2 ground, plus you need to look stylish using only one axe. Expect everything to be thrown at you during this day, so be prepared!
The snow pack can present plenty of headaches; expect this central theme to raise its ugly head many times during the assessment. Get practical experience, the SAIS is more than happy to allow experienced mountain people to tag along when they’re profiling (book ahead!). Dealing with a variable snow pack requires knowledge and experience, so be comfortable with this subject. The SAIS provides a good daily forecast and Mother Nature supplies the current conditions.
But it’s up to you the MIC to assimilate the information on offer, remember most avalanche victim’s trigger the avalanche themselves! So if it doesn’t feel right then you need to speak up and act.
Day 2…Personal Climbing (04.25am)
Hum! Crack of sparrows. Today the fun bus is leaving for the Ben at 05.30am. Conditions are lean in the Northern Corries and so we head to the west where conditions are just as lean, but we’ll have the added bonus of cloudy skies and maybe rain! Before setting off George makes it nice and clear what the day is about and what the lads need to see.
We’re off… leaving the bus at a jog and Jules is up for a nice swift approach. We have about 7 or 8 routes in mind (not to do in one day!). We explain to Jules that we want to have a nosey once we get into Coire Na Ciste. After a quick scan, our sights are set on Green Gully. By the time we’ve reached the top we’ve each lead 3 pitches using parallel. Plus we’ve done ledge cutting, stance management, gear placement and also the much watched belay plate orientation! Along the way there was plenty of probing questions but it was also kept very social. We descended down No.3 doing stompers along the way.
After a couple of swift lowers, Jules passed on a neat way of dealing with the slack line between the 1st and 2nd client and the stomper. He showed a way of using an Italian hitch off the 2nd’s harness (or client nearest you). This maintains tension between the 1st & 2nd client. A couple more top tips from Jules, plus some feed back on the day saw us cranking it back to the car park for 15.30.
Remember a lot of candidates struggle on this day because they aren’t climbing at the grade; everything else is MIA stuff with gloves, axes and crampons on!
Day 3…Client Day 1
The night before George handed out some background information on each of our guinea pigs (GP’s). He stressed that this information had been gleaned from the GP’s booking forms, so it could be real or imagined!
8.00am kick off. George reinforces what he said the night before re: the GP’s info and also makes it clear what the assessor’s roles and responsibility’s are for the two days. It boils down to this: they need to hear what your saying and they need to be able to see if the clients are being kept safe and if that’s not the case they’d step in to make them safe. At the same time they’d try to let your day flow as much as possible, as long as it’s safe!
Approaching the corries it was time to start finding out what the lads had really done, plus what they wanted to get out of the two days. Their aspirations for the two days where way more then I could cover in the time we had and after some discussion a much more achievable list was drawn up.
After some ground work and coaching on all things climbing we popped up Jacobs Ladder looking at more things climbing. Our day finished off with some tricky navigation back to the car park in the blistering sunshine!
During the day Jules floated around, checking things out. He was keen to ask the GP’s questions (to check belays & instructions) whilst I was busy setting up belays, he also had the craic which the boys liked. I rounded the day off by debriefing the two boys and gave them some handouts in an effort to do some front loading for day 2. Some feed back from Jules finished the day off nicely.
Remember when planning the client days to think flexibly and to leave the blinkers at home.
Don’t be afraid to look the assessor in the eye (or in the mirrored sunglasses!) and say that you don’t have a plan, but that you have several plans and that you’ll only reveal your hand once you’ve got your nose inside the corrie.
Avoid the clutter of the trade routes; there’s plenty of adventure beyond the honey pot areas. Be confident you’re an MIC! Don’t repeat a route you’ve done a million times. You get fewer points for sloppy work on familiar ground and more points for keeping it real!
Day 4…Client day 2
No freeze over night!!! Conditions are thin (even in the gullies) it’s raining, thawing and there’s plenty of rock fall on the cards, ‘and today we need to see a…progression!’ So how do you work that? You’ve got clients that want to lead, rock that doesn’t want to stay together and only vertical porridge on the menu. With thawing conditions firmly in mind my plan was to avoid the obvious areas, which of course presented the obvious hazards. We headed for an area that offered solid bedrock and not the janga type stuff that you’re going to find on the head wall during a major thaw cycle.
It’s about showing how you as an MIC make the best of the conditions that are on offer. Think out loud and pass on what you are seeing and how you are judging it. Do this in an effort to help coach the little piglets, so they can start forming their own judgments? During these two days there are no scenarios only the ones that occur naturally!
• Try to avoid the “paralysis by analysis” type session, teach and coach on the hoof and deliver the information in memorable chunks and formats.
• Don’t go over old ground and keep it flowing and going in the right direction.
• Aim to tick off the topics on your client’s wish lists.
• Remember your job is to make them better winter climbers, not to turn them into instructors!
For me it seemed like my two GP’s were happy to let the wheels keep on turning, they didn’t want to make waves whilst the assessor was close by plus they tended to hold back on the esoteric questions until the coast was clear (are these sensitive new age guinea pigs?). I finished the day of by debriefing the lads and by passing on some more winter related handouts.
After a word with Jules about the day it was off to the bar to meet with the other 3 lads. The plan, to get drunk before getting our results!
In relation to the GP’s, don’t expect to be handed a nice evenly matched pair. The difference in their experience and aspirations could be massive, so be prepared to deal with that. Avoid assumption it can lead you on the slippery road to hell!
Both of the client days are about picking the right location i.e. one that is safe and offers scope to educate the clients. Do what you would do normally when working outside of the assessment situation. You want to be true to yourself, don’t try to second-guess the assessor, you’ll never know what their thinking!
The Standard, Assessment-itis and an overview…
Can anyone ever answer the question of standard? What you need, is to have a good solid base in all things winter.
• You can get away with some things and you don’t need to be “a super slick years of experience lodge type” but you do need to look like you’re getting there.
• You need to be consistent on each day.
• You are marked simply; your day has been poor, average or good.
• That’s based on an overview, try to remember that it’s a 4-day assessment and the process is “holistic”.
But if there’s a common thread weaving its way through your performance over all then…
In terms of stress, put in the mileage to help avoid it, you’ll only get out what you put in (remember the “rule of p’s”!).
Turn up with only one result firmly fixed in your mind (that should be to pass, yeah!). Do the AMI winter workshop, it offers you a no holds barred chance to ask all those questions you we’re afraid to ask on the training course (thanks Jaz!). Get out and climb with real climbers, not just instructors, you can learn a lot from them (the real climbers that is!).
And lastly the assessors…
There was no messing and they are definitely human! I’m sure I saw them sweating? (that’s an unconfirmed sighting!). The lads always made it clear what they wanted and were open to questioning (but not answering! ah no they were!!). They certainly put in the long hard hours each day both with us and behind the scenes. Plus they didn’t pull any strange or funky stunts during the week, be prepared for plenty of mental probing, you know the questions when you really don’t want questions sort of thing! Have fun; it’s a really good week?
Ps. if anyone wants more info then drop me a line at bren@mountaintraining.ie
Pps. remember it’s not based on luck!!!
More info: http://mountaintraining.ie/index.php?lnk=courses&type=hillwalking
More info: http://www.ami.org.uk
