Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
A wild experience with Carnegie Great Outdoors
Ghyll scrambling is not one of my everyday activities, in fact the last time I did it was in primary school…so a few years ago!
When I was told that as part of filming a student residential with Carnegie Great Outdoors, there would be an opportunity for me to take part and get some great footage with a go pro camera, I (sort of) jumped at the chance. I liked the idea of experiencing first-hand what the students do, of challenging myself and getting out of my comfort zone.
I had a slight hesitation on the morning, but I went for it and I’m glad I did. Never again would I get the chance to do gorge scrambling with three very experienced instructors, including one professional mountaineer, looking after me.
As I got ready to go into the ghyll, putting on my buoyancy aid and helmet over the wetsuit and waterproof jacket, I did wonder what on earth I was doing and whether I had temporarily lost my mind, but I soon overcame that and in I got with the group of Sports and Exercise Science students.
The first step was into freezing cold water and from then on I had water sloshing around in my boots – however it got warmer as I walked so I quickly forgot about it.
We were told to stay low like monkeys when negotiating the ghyll – this seemed strange at first but quickly became second nature as the paths got trickier. Our first obstacle was a small waterfall which we had to climb – at that moment it seemed difficult but we quickly realised as we went on that it was one of the easy parts.
During our scramble, we sat under waterfalls, went under logs, fell backwards into water with our arms across our chests, climbed up a steep waterfall with water gushing down onto us and jumped into a pool from a thin rock ledge, having climbed our way along it.
I witnessed how the students came together to help each other and can see how such activities can bring a group of relative strangers into a team working together to achieve their goal. If you didn’t know your fellow students at the beginning of the week, you definitely would by the end!
Ben, one of the students, spoke of how proud he was to have climbed a particularly tricky waterfall and of how the group helped him out.
I’ll leave the final word to another student Beth who said ‘Do it. You’ve got to go. It’s amazing!’ I couldn’t agree more.