Grand Courses with Lou Reynolds
Trainee British Mountain Guide Lou Reynolds with her top tips for climbing big alpine routes.
Lou shares 6 Grand Courses during this presentation and her top 10 tips that she has learnt (often the hard way!) over her Alpine Apprenticeship.
Grand Courses are Alpine routes that are more than 500m long, usually complex and committing and require full variety of skills to reach a large peak. This brings together the full picture of everything you can learn in the mountains and Lou has been aiming for these routes since the beginning.
The BMG scheme requires 5 big routes of grade TD and above on both snow and rock terrain for the application. Lou tells us how these routes require skills, ability and climbing partners to come together and almost needs the stars aligning for success.
“I’ve always wanted to climb big alpine routes.”
I started out by taking my Mum climbing…
We heard about climbing rocky ridges, long ice pitches and steep granite chimneys, plus how sometimes the descent can be the crux of the route! Lou shares her advice for unplanned bivvys and what handy items to have in your rucksack - all important knowledge for when you start to increase the length and difficulty of the routes you are trying.
When the weather is bad…
Drink Wine!
Among the 10 top tips Lou tells us about she describes how you need to approach these longer routes as you would a marathon - plan for nutrition and hydration plus look after your partners. Libby Peter uses the term ‘soft strong’ - find out what this means to Lou and how she keeps motivated for big goals and long routes.
During the Q&A session at the end, Lou answers questions about the best way to get started with Alpine Climbing, how to find partners and information about routes, what fixed equipment there is on these routes and about her female role models.
Enjoy the talk and let us know if you have any more questions for Lou!