Congratulations to three new mountain bike leaders who passed their TCL today. Emma, Chris and Callum all did a great job today on our varied ride around Invergarry and demonstrated all the requirements to work as trail cycle leaders. These include group management, navigation, trail side bike fixes and dealing with accidents and incidents. We had great fun on the trails and the sun came out between the showers which are falling as snow on the summits still!

Today we combined a family rope tricks adventure in Glen Nevis with a bit of scrambling rope work coaching so the family can go and enjoy some scrambles independently. Andy, Claire, Phoebe and Archie were all up for a mixed bag of climbing, dangling and learning at Poldubh, all of which turned out to be a lot of fun.

We started out by climbing Scimitar Ridge which provides excellent scrambling made up of short tricky steps with grass and rock ledges in between. The views are brilliant too. We covered some moving together with the whole family on the rope, using slings and Italian hitches, body belaying and taking coils on your shoulder to shorten the rope. We threw in an abseil on the way back down as well, watched by a few deer just below.

Next up we went past the insect eating flowers and moss that's useful for dressing open wounds to The Alp where we set up a brilliant zip wire. While we were sliding down the rope a deer casually looked at us and wandered off to nibble at some fresh shoots.

Not done yet, we went down to the Lower Falls and put in a Tyrolean Traverse across the waterfall. It was raining by then anyway so getting a little more wet in the spray from the waterfall was fine. It was a chilly day again though with fresh snow on the highest tops. The snow line will come down much lower tomorrow and it will remain cold for another week perhaps.

There is a lot of fun to be had doing all sorts of rope tricks in Glen Nevis for any family. If it is dry or wet, climbing, abseiling, sliding or jumping, come and enjoy some family adventures.

Lochaber and Lorn Ramblers are nudging the envelope of ramblers in the UK. After winter skills courses and an avalanche awareness course in the winter we went for some scrambling training today. We went to Glen Coe, the home of scrambling in mainland Britain.

On the Pink Rib of Beinn a'Chrualiaste we looked at movement skills in ascent, focussing on balance and body position to make the most of the holds available. We explored the friction on the clean rhyolite and route choice decisions. We also looked at how to make someone else in the team more secure.

After doing all this in ascent with one of the best views in Lochaber we turned round and went straight back down again. Scrambling in descent presents more of a challenge and we explored how to move down the rock steps with confidence and control. Scrambling opens up a huge number of routes that are beyond hill walking and is a great way to get away from it all, physically and mentally.