http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog The climbing blog of Paul Lewis Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:31:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I must apologise as I´ve not much time to to write because this is our final night in Quito and we are heading out for a celebratory meal very soon. Today we´ve had a long haul back to the big city after a few chilled out days rafting and staying with ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=465 Well, so far Ecuador has been amazing - Great people. Great mountains. Great scenery and a great feel to the place. After arrival the team spent time settling in and we made acclimatisation ascents of some of the smaller (but still spectacular) volcanoes around Quito. After that we ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=464 Arrived safely in Ecuador after a very long journey........A dash from the days instructing to Manchester Airport for the flight to Heathrow, a few hours sleep before meeting the team at the airport, a fight to Madrid, 5 hours in the airport then 12 hours on the flight to Quito! ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=462 As always this is a crazy time to be leaving the hectic summer season to run an overseas expedition - but as usual that is what I´m doing! The last few weeks have been really busy with climbing courses, a large scale activity week for a local school, private guiding work ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=463 I always know if it’s been too long since my last blog entry when I log into Word Press and find there are 480 meaningless spam messages writing for approval – or, as is usually the case, immediate deletion! But I’ve got excuses! We don’t like to do things by ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=461 This weekend I’ve been running two days of training for Leeds Mountaineering Club. Funding for the sessions came from the BMC and this is one of several similar courses Peak Mountaineering has run in the last couple of years. On Saturday I ran an Introductory Climbing Skills Day ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=460 This week I’ve been running a residential in the Lake District with a local school. We base ourselves in the lovely west Cumbria location of Nether Wasdale, which offers a great playground of activities on the doorstep. This is a regular fixture on the Peak Mountaineering calendar and ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=459 I’ve run a number of courses for the Air Training Corps in the past and this weekend I was running a site-specific climbing wall course for a group of officers at Nescliffe training base. Over 2 days we looked at all the key skills they need to run safe ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=458 I work as a Technical Advisor for a variety of commercial companies and educational organisations. The role varies according to the organisations needs but usually involves advice on safe practices, training and assessing staff members, preparing organisations for assessments and a host of other related tasks. It ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=457 I’ve written before about my involvement with the Department for International Development’s expedition programme. Over three years they have funded many young people to undertake projects in a range of developing countries. This week I spent 4 days in Leeds and Manchester interviewing potential candidates and, as usual, ... http://www.peakmountaineering.com/blog/?p=456