Twas a dark & stormy night....

But one of us felt a need to go and have a 'dry' run of a night navigation training event I'm running this weekend.
In reality it actually turned out to be a very very wet trial run, and I'm glad I did as I can't see conditions improving enough for me to be happy to take beginners here. By the time I'd climbed the steep (& now loose thanks to lots of rain) path up the side of Dow Bank I'd moved to plan B, by the time I'd decided the treacherous wet rocks of Huntingstile Crag were an accident waiting to happen plans C&D had flown the coup - there'll be lots of looking at a map tonight.

I have a love-hate relationship with navigation - whilst I can excel at it, and I know a good understanding is vital to being in the hills safely I hate the over emphasis it's come to have in Mountaineering, especially the award schemes, where I feel some other equally important Mountaineering skills have been squeezed out - another move to a lower common denominator. However I love knowing I can go pretty much where I please when I want - or as our American guiding cousins are want to say "all the terrain, all the conditions, all the time..."

Doesn't make a pitch black night time encounter with a snarling* Herdwick any less scary though....

* By day - little fluffy clouds of happiness.
At night - the shining evil eyes of the devil!