I headed over to Ilkley for the area AGM this week, it's only 40 miles but a pain with York traffic and getting there for 7 was a bit of an ask, so I didn't.
The meeting was trundling along when i arrived (followed by many others) and went trough the usual election of officers, access reps (Dave M being elected in his absence) and a new Hill Walking rep nice one Mr Redding, be interesting to see what comes of that. A plea for people to buy the new grit guides (superb and with some club contributions)
Post AGM we had the normal meeting with the usual reports from said access reps, not much news really, Caley about to get a clean up and tree trim, reminder about litter and parking at the Roost. The BMC have issued a draft statement about using fixed pegs, basically saying beware, you have no idea how good they are! This highly uncontentious and reasonably obvious document somehow managed to spark some fruitless debate ! Not much else happened before the sarnies and chips appeared and whilst nice were lacking in quantity !
We had a bit of a round room introduction, where a few people said they had only come to listen to the post meeting talk by Nick Colton (BMC Deputy CEO ). Interesting as it's what i was hinting at during our AGM last week….
Nick's talk was about the alpinism in the 70's (with a bit of fluff at either end) and understated is how i'd describe it. It was at the beginning of the 'fast and light' approach, small team (2,3) start at the bottom, climb to top as quick as possible in one go, no fixed ropes etc. Climbing with Alex McKintyre and other youngsters (they were 23 at the time!) they established many super classic routes, the Colton-McKintyre perhaps he most famous. This route gets much press these days. Nick reflected on changing times, approaches (Uli Stek soloed it on 2 hrs 21mins!) gear and other questions from the audience. Good talk and clearly a good ploy by the BMC.
I think its good for YAC to have a presence, shame its so far, though the return journey was easy.
Thanks for the report. Did anyone else tag along in the end?