Lessons learned in the mountains

Go to the hills long enough and, with luck, you'll build up your own store of mishaps and near misses - they're called experience, and the trick is to learn from them.

Any sort of close shave should be a learning opportunity for you, with a clear look back on what happened allowing you to pick out the things you did wrong, or could have done better, the things you should have done but didn't and the things you did which you shouldn't have. The idea isn't to beat yourself up about how stupid you were, but to learn from your mistakes so you don't repeat them.

In this page we've included tales of rescues and near misses, so you can learn from others' mistakes and hopefully avoid making them yourself.

If you have any cautionary tales of your own, where you have learned valuable lessons, you can send them to neil@mountaineering.scot for consideration. It may be summer or winter, climbing or walking. We'll use the best on this page (although, to save anyone's blushes, we won't use names).

Now read on...