Spanish Highs - Safety and your guides

Our view on Safety

The climax is not on the summit, the climax is the coming back, the coming out of a dangerous place. Reinhold Messner

Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end" Edward Whymper (Ascent of The Matterhorn, 1871)

Our Guides

We have both English and Spanish guides
They are all local to the Sierra Nevada
They live there throughout the year
They are suitably qualified for the differing activities we offer
living here they also have attained an intimate knowledge and experience of these mountains that many years have brought

Our View on Safety

Our trips are aimed primarily at hill walkers who wish to add scrambling, rock climbing and mountaineering skills to the skills they already possess.
As a climber, mountaineer or scrambler, we expect and encourage you to be self reliant and to want to accept responsibility for your own safety in the mountain or outdoor environment. We encourage you to discuss with us what is expected of you in terms of all aspects of safety on our trips.
Having said that, we do not offer you any kind of choice when it comes to safety. Your views are relevant in terms of any safety discussion but our decision on safety matters has to be final. Safety is our priority.
We are not prepared to compromise safety or effective instruction simply to make our trips more exciting than they otherwise are.
If individuals on our trips have differing levels of experience, we will conduct the trip at the level of expertise of the least experienced individual on of the trip. Experience has shown us that to push people at a pace, which is beyond their capability in the outdoor environment, is almost certain to result in failure.
On certain trips, it may be possible, where we have an adequate number of Consultants along on the trip, to allocate those of you with different levels of expertise between the Consultants, particularly where it is in the safety interests of the trip as a whole to do so.
We believe that our safety record spanning 47 years (up to 2005) of UK/Alpine/International climbing is second to none and speaks for itself as to the safety of our tried and tested trips.
Mountaineering and climbing can be potentially dangerous pastimes , but reckless people can be found in all walks of life. Accidents do happen but at least 80% are avoidable. For example, most people interested in the safety aspects of the sport would wear a safety helmet when climbing, yet a growing number of climbers continually fail to wear one.
As Independent Guides we play by the rules of the game and as such our record is perfect.
We intend to keep it that way!

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