NEW Book REVIEW
A Practical Manual by Mike Raine
Published by Pesda Press, £19.99
IT SEEMS HARD to start this review of Th e Mountain Leader without talking about the author. Mike is an extremely experienced Mountaineering Instructor, having worked as a senior instructor at a national training centre and on most of the Mountain Training awards, and this really shines through the whole book. And whilst there are many experienced instructors, not everyone has the ability to distil their knowledge in such an easy way as Mike. The tone throughout is informal and chatty, rather than a handbook-style series of instructions. And that is one of the important points: this not a handbook.
It won’t tell you exactly how to pass your Mountain Leader assessment, but what it does do is prepare you to be a real Mountain Leader, working with real groups, real weather and real expectations.
The book is split into two parts. The first – ‘To be a Mountain Leader’ – covers Clothing and Equipment, Navigation, Weather, and Access, Environment & Conservation. This sums up what you will learn on your training course, what you would be expected to know for an assessment, and those little extra bits that might be useful to know. The second part is ‘Being a Mountain Leader’, which takes a much deeper dive into how to actually do the job, and the so-called ‘soft skills’ around leadership, group management and decision making. This is usually the hard part because it can’t be learnt from a textbook, and needs to be developed over time spent doing the job. But this is where all the little boxes headed ‘Top tips from Mountain Leaders’ come in. These shared stories and handy hints can help short-cut some mistakes you might make, and allow you to learn from others, especially if you’re not in a position where you know many Mountain Leaders and can have these conversations. Gathering this info not just from Mike but also many of his col
