It's the autumn and winter season again, so for all mountaineers it's the time to look forward to, and then actually enjoy snow covered mountains and fantastic views. Lets hope we get a good winter season with plenty of crisp snow and clear views. Anyway, autumn and winter is also the time to meet up indoors with like-minded people, be it at film festivals, club talks, safety lectures and so on.
This is an important time of year for the MCofS because this is when we give most of our safety related talks & put on our Winter Skills and Avalanche Awareness courses. We therefore get out to meet the public on a number of occasions, whether it be at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival, Skills for the Hills talks or the ever popular Winter Safety Lectures.
I will be at a number of these events, so am looking forward to meeting a number of our existing members and hopefully some new members as well.
Communicating our winter safety message is a very important aspect of our work and whilst we never know when that work has prevented a mountain rescue incident, there can be no doubt that the more we are able to deliver that message to the widest possible audience, then the more likely it is that people will be better-informed and less likely to have incidents.
As well as communicating the safety message, which is Heather Morning's role, we also need to communicate the news of where and when the talks and courses will be happening, and that is where I come in.
The Courses and Events page on the MCofS website is the place where we list all of our courses and talks, but we use our website News section, our two e-newsletters, news releases and social media to point people towards our list of forthcoming events.
If you haven't already checked out our upcoming events then do take a look now. I hope you can get along to one of our talks over the next few weeks and months, and look forward to meeting you if you are going to be attending.
Friday 9 November 2012
Friday 8 June 2012
Blogability
If you're reading this you are probably already aware of the MCofS Searchable Blogs page. We launched it on Monday 28th May and achieved widespread publicity. When I got into work yesterday (June 7th) I received our Web Stats for the month of May. The Blogs page was the 7th most visited page in May. Not bad for a page that had no publicity and just a handful of visitors until the 28th.
The Blogs page has been there for a couple of years, but until May 28th had just been a simple list of links to mountaineering related blogs. What has brought it to life and made it worthy of promotion is the search facility.
I've had the vision for some time of being able to go onto the Blogs page and search the blogs listed on there for the name of a mountain, a crag, a climb, a person's name or even a piece of equipment. By incorporating Google Custom Search onto the page it is now possible to do that, and it is great to see that visitors to the MCofS website have instantly recognised the value of this facility.
To achieve 7th place in our monthly list of most visited pages, when the page was only attracting visitors for the last 3.5 days of the month, is pretty impressive. So, thank you to all those who covered the news of the Blogs page in their publications and everyone who has visited the page. I hope you continue to use the page and find it useful into the future.
Just in case you haven't seen it, here is a link to the news release.
And just in case you haven't visited it yet, here is a link to the Blogs page.
The Blogs page has been there for a couple of years, but until May 28th had just been a simple list of links to mountaineering related blogs. What has brought it to life and made it worthy of promotion is the search facility.
I've had the vision for some time of being able to go onto the Blogs page and search the blogs listed on there for the name of a mountain, a crag, a climb, a person's name or even a piece of equipment. By incorporating Google Custom Search onto the page it is now possible to do that, and it is great to see that visitors to the MCofS website have instantly recognised the value of this facility.
To achieve 7th place in our monthly list of most visited pages, when the page was only attracting visitors for the last 3.5 days of the month, is pretty impressive. So, thank you to all those who covered the news of the Blogs page in their publications and everyone who has visited the page. I hope you continue to use the page and find it useful into the future.
Just in case you haven't seen it, here is a link to the news release.
And just in case you haven't visited it yet, here is a link to the Blogs page.
Friday 25 May 2012
Winter to Summer in Less Than a Week
What a turnaround in our weather these last few days. We had a week off recently and got out for three days on the hills. Corbetts to be more specific.
Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th we were in the Glenfinnan area and managed to take in 5 Corbetts. Sgurr Ghiubhsachain and Sgorr Craobh a' Chaorainn on the Tuesday and An Stac, Rois-Bheinn and Sgurr na Ba Glaise on the Wednesday. We enjoyed some sunshine and fantastic views, but it was cold, there were a number of snow showers and the snow was lying to below 2,500 feet.
By Sunday 20th we were down in Dumfries & Galloway and had a very enjoyable walk/run around the circuit of Hart Fell in wall-to-wall sunshine. The transition from winter to summer had taken place in a matter of a few days.
And now on Friday 25th I find myself at work putting out messages warning of the dangers of hyperthermia, heat stroke and dehydration; oh and adders as well.
Something we have started doing over the last few months is putting out messages on a Friday via Twitter, Facebook and our website, warning of the main danger or hazard that hillgoers are likely to face over the coming weekend.
From the retweets we are getting and the occasional message reaching the BBC Scotland news webpages, we are confident that we are reaching a wide audience with these messages. By getting these messages out to increasing numbers of walkers and climbers we feel that we should be contributing to improved levels of mountain safety awareness.
Although we will never know it, one or more of these messages may well prevent a mountain rescue incident at some point.
If you do read this blog then do look out for our "Something for the weekend" messages in the future. Follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook and look out for our postings on Fridays. Our Twitter Friday safety messages will have the hash tag #sftwe.
Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th we were in the Glenfinnan area and managed to take in 5 Corbetts. Sgurr Ghiubhsachain and Sgorr Craobh a' Chaorainn on the Tuesday and An Stac, Rois-Bheinn and Sgurr na Ba Glaise on the Wednesday. We enjoyed some sunshine and fantastic views, but it was cold, there were a number of snow showers and the snow was lying to below 2,500 feet.
By Sunday 20th we were down in Dumfries & Galloway and had a very enjoyable walk/run around the circuit of Hart Fell in wall-to-wall sunshine. The transition from winter to summer had taken place in a matter of a few days.
And now on Friday 25th I find myself at work putting out messages warning of the dangers of hyperthermia, heat stroke and dehydration; oh and adders as well.
Something we have started doing over the last few months is putting out messages on a Friday via Twitter, Facebook and our website, warning of the main danger or hazard that hillgoers are likely to face over the coming weekend.
From the retweets we are getting and the occasional message reaching the BBC Scotland news webpages, we are confident that we are reaching a wide audience with these messages. By getting these messages out to increasing numbers of walkers and climbers we feel that we should be contributing to improved levels of mountain safety awareness.
Although we will never know it, one or more of these messages may well prevent a mountain rescue incident at some point.
If you do read this blog then do look out for our "Something for the weekend" messages in the future. Follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook and look out for our postings on Fridays. Our Twitter Friday safety messages will have the hash tag #sftwe.
Friday 30 March 2012
Springtime at the MCofS
Well that winter didn't last long. Not even the end of March and already been hill walking in short sleeves. We managed 5 new Corbetts in a mega-weekend to Glen Dessary last week. A 9.5 hour day on Saturday & 12 hour day on Sunday. It was a long time (19 years) since I'd been to Glen Dessary, so good to get reacquainted with one of Scotland's finest mountain areas. There's still so much to do there, so no way I'm going to leave it so long before our next trip there.
Even though it was still March, it was so good to have that extra bit of daylight at the end of the day. Light until 8.00 p.m. Fantastic! From now on the days just get longer, but no matter what the month, there is always that danger of misjudging how long it will take to complete your route and you could end up benighted.
If you follow the MCofS on Facebook and Twitter you will have seen that we've really been pushing the "check your headtorches" message this winter. Take a look at the Mountain Rescue statistics in the 2010 report http://www.mcofs.org.uk/assets/scottish_mountain_rescue_incidents_2010.pdf and you will see that getting benighted is one of the main attributable reasons for incidents involving rescue teams. If everyone in your party has a headtorch with good batteries and spare batteries then you are unlikely to end up benighted and therefore less likely to become involved in a rescue incident.
Even as we go into the summer and enjoy the long evenings, it is still worth remembering the message about always carrying a good headtorch with plenty of battery power available.
As for current work in the MCofS office, we've been busy with several things this week. There have been a few updates on the MCofS Members' Discount Scheme pages on the website. http://www.mcofs.org.uk/discounts.asp We welcome the Braeside Guest House in Drymen to the Accommodation page and there's a few changes on the Short Term Offers page. Worth a look.
We've also sent out MCofS posters to the members of the Scottish Climbing Walls Network, so if you go to any of these walls look out for these posters.
We've also been promoting our upcoming Navigation courses, so if you are interested in these take a look at: http://www.mcofs.org.uk/navigation-courses.asp.
Unfortunately, the weather looks like returning to form tomorrow, just in time for the weekend, so a chance to rest up after last weekend's exertions. Hopefully this early season heatwave is a taste of the long hot summer of 2012 to come. We have a long list of Corbetts and kayak trips in mind, so more good weather please.
As always, don't forget to check MWIS http://www.mcofs.org.uk/weather-reports.asp for the weather forecast before you go out.
Even though it was still March, it was so good to have that extra bit of daylight at the end of the day. Light until 8.00 p.m. Fantastic! From now on the days just get longer, but no matter what the month, there is always that danger of misjudging how long it will take to complete your route and you could end up benighted.
If you follow the MCofS on Facebook and Twitter you will have seen that we've really been pushing the "check your headtorches" message this winter. Take a look at the Mountain Rescue statistics in the 2010 report http://www.mcofs.org.uk/assets/scottish_mountain_rescue_incidents_2010.pdf and you will see that getting benighted is one of the main attributable reasons for incidents involving rescue teams. If everyone in your party has a headtorch with good batteries and spare batteries then you are unlikely to end up benighted and therefore less likely to become involved in a rescue incident.
Even as we go into the summer and enjoy the long evenings, it is still worth remembering the message about always carrying a good headtorch with plenty of battery power available.
As for current work in the MCofS office, we've been busy with several things this week. There have been a few updates on the MCofS Members' Discount Scheme pages on the website. http://www.mcofs.org.uk/discounts.asp We welcome the Braeside Guest House in Drymen to the Accommodation page and there's a few changes on the Short Term Offers page. Worth a look.
We've also sent out MCofS posters to the members of the Scottish Climbing Walls Network, so if you go to any of these walls look out for these posters.
We've also been promoting our upcoming Navigation courses, so if you are interested in these take a look at: http://www.mcofs.org.uk/navigation-courses.asp.
Unfortunately, the weather looks like returning to form tomorrow, just in time for the weekend, so a chance to rest up after last weekend's exertions. Hopefully this early season heatwave is a taste of the long hot summer of 2012 to come. We have a long list of Corbetts and kayak trips in mind, so more good weather please.
As always, don't forget to check MWIS http://www.mcofs.org.uk/weather-reports.asp for the weather forecast before you go out.
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