Meet the instructors: part 3
Whether you’ve been on one of our courses, have been considering coming to us to learn, or are just passionate about the outdoors like we are, you might be wanting to know a bit more about the team here at Glenmore Lodge! In this blog and over the three to follow, we’ve asked our core instructional team a few questions to help you get to know them better
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Emma Holgate:
Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?
Hi I’m Emma Holgate, I’m a Senior Instructor at Glenmore lodge and I have been here for just over three years. I work predominantly in the mountain bike department during the spring, summer, and autumn, and then in the ski department during the winter months
What do you love about instructing at Glenmore Lodge?
Working at Glenmore Lodge is a lot of fun, its being part of the team which is the biggest draw for me – working here with so many different disciplines and different expertise, and also the support of so many folk working in the office doing multiple different jobs, and there’s the fantastic catering team, the facilities team, so it’s all about the big team picture. And also what’s on the doorstep right from Glenmore Lodge, with the surrounding mountains and rivers and what that all brings for us
Part of what’s great about working at Glenmore Lodge is the opportunity to be part of development with National Governing Bodies such as Scottish Cycling & British Cycling, and also working with a variety of different clients whether they’re on leadership qualification courses, or here to learn new skills or advance their skills
What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?
Autumn for me is a transitional time from the bike to the skis – so the legs need to just adjust slightly, so I end up doing quite a lot of running. However its also a little bit of downtime where I can fit in some good adventures in holiday time, so this season I’ve got some trips in on the bike in Morocco and the South of France – so whether that’s part of the transitional prep or not I’m not sure, but it’ll keep me fit, ready for the winter!
What are you looking forward to about winter?
So what I look forward to every year is using as much optimism as possible for the coming winter; thinking about how it could be knee deep powder some days or it could be trotting about in trainers trying to find the best snow and linking the patches. It’s that creative approach that you need to embrace a full Scottish season
What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?
Top 3 places for where I have adventured? In Scotland or the UK, has got to be the North West/Torridon area and then the West Coast around Fort William, and then the Cairngorms, so they’re my top 3 for the UK
And then I suppose top 3 worldwide, well that’s a really tricky one because it’s just endless – and I think there’s so many places that I’d love to go which I think will always outdo what was the last top place I’ve been. But one memorable place has been the Colorado Trail which I rode on my bike for 500 miles across Colorado, great place for an adventure!
Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?
Best adventure I’ve been on was possibly Cuba, with super cool friends, big white beaches, rainforests and lots of culture!
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Mark Chadwick:
Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?
Hi I’m Mark Chadwick, I’ve been working here at for Glenmore Lodge for 15 years I think now on a .5 contract. I am one of the International Mountain Guides, I work as a WMCI, and so a majority of my work over the last few years has been mountain work; climbing, mountaineering, skills courses, qualification courses as well. I work in the ski department, and I have worked a fair bit with the paddling department but less so recently
What do you love about instructing at Glenmore Lodge?
Working at Glenmore Lodge I get to work alongside some of the best instructors in the country, if not the world, and that helps improve my own instructing and coaching and helps challenge me. I also get to access an incredible amount of equipment from the stores, I get to use the building which is really well set up, and also the location; for a lot of the work that I do on skis or mountaineering, it’s incredible having the Cairngorms National Park right on your doorstep and then the West Coast just a few hours drive away
The bits I enjoy about my job the most are the areas it takes me to and the people I get to meet, I get to work all over the world. I like travelling so the opportunity to travel and combine it with work and make a living from it is pretty incredible. The folks you get to meet along the way are often very interesting and have great stories as well
What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?
The enjoyable part of autumn for me is that often the summer workload starts to reduce, and I have a bit more time for myself, so I’ll often find myself out on my bike keeping my general fitness going. But during lockdown I built a climbing wall out the back of my garage, so I’ve got that set up for dry tooling as well so ill often start to get on the tools around this time of year, then realise how week I am and spend Autumn trying to get stronger
What are you looking forward to about winter?
Winter is always a lottery, so you always look forward to it immensely and you’re always surprised by what you get. I look forward to a good winter the most, some years you don’t get it and you just get out there anyway, but when we do have a good winter then the skiing and the climbing and everything available to us is just phenomenal!
What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?
So top three venues that I love going to and love spending time in, I guess Skye always comes really high on my list just for the pure scenery and mountains and the rock and the layout of it all – It’s pretty special for Scotland to be sure
Beyond Scotland I spend a lot of time out in the alps, and that is the adventure playground that you dream of with routes of every size and difficulty, and skiing and mountain biking and everything, there’s so much to do in the European alps
Going further abroad, I once spent a month in Patagonia, and I would love to go out there again. The climbing out there, and the culture and way of life, and just the general scene is so enjoyable and great
Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?
One day winter traverse of the Skye Cuillin Ridge!
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Jon Jones:
Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?
Hi my name’s Jon Jones, I’m the head of Rock & Mountain here at Glenmore Lodge and I’ve been full-time for 21 years
What do you love about instructing at Glenmore Lodge?
So I first became aware of Glenmore Lodge when I was only about 16 or 17, I came up here climbing into the Cairngorms. I came from north Wales by way of Plas Y Brenin and I was sort of told this was the Scottish equivalent to that – so pretty much from that day I decided that I wanted to work here so I just needed to work out what kind of pathway I was going to take to work here. For me working at Glenmore lodge has just been a lifelong ambition and it’s sort of gone hand in hand with my climbing. It was something I saw as a goal from a very young age, and I still love working here
What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?
In the autumn in preparation for the winter, it’s sort of the time of year that I’ll do most of my Munro bagging; it’s a good time of year to get round the hills because the temperature is pretty good for doing some bigger days and it’s a good way to start getting fit for the winter
I’ll also do some gym work as well, so it’s quite important to do some strength and conditioning work – a lot of squats, because in winter you’re carrying a far heavier bag. And also if I can, then if we do get some early cold snaps then I’ll try to get out and do some early steep and mean, if the condition allow
What are you looking forward to about winter?
Hopefully we’ll have a really good winter this year. For myself I’m an obsessed climber so every winter what I’m trying to do is work out where’s the best place to go winter climbing so hopefully though the winter there’ll be conditions that mean I can still tick off some of these routes that I want to do; some classics and some of the more esoteric routes around different parts of Scotland, so that’s what I’m looking forward to!
What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?
So top 3 places for having adventure, well first one is definitely here, that’s why I choose to live here! What’s really nice now, is that not only have I discovered it for myself but I’ve taken students and candidates who are here to enjoy the hills, but also now both my daughters are the age where I can take them out to enjoy the cairngorms – so it’s definitely top of my list. After that it would definitely be the islands – so my desert island is multi pitch rock climbs, whether that’s big sea cliffs or big mountain crags. Going out to the islands, any of the islands, that includes Skye, the Hebrides, Pabay, Mingulay, then that’s definitely a big appeal for me.
Then after that, I would say that again as a bit of an obsessed climber, bit of an obsessed rock jock, and I do want to complete all the classic rock and all the hard rock routes, so other climbing places in the UK would be my third one.
Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?
So my favourite adventure, which is the adventure that set me up for life, was as a 15-year-old schoolboy with a friend, using all of our summer money to buy some climbing kit, to then go down and visit his sister down at Brixham and we went and climbed a route called moon raker on Berry head which is a multi-pitch sea cliff. It was absolutely terrifying, but it was so terrifying that that was me addicted to climbing for rest of my life
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Giles Trussell
Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?
My name’s Giles Trussell, I’ve been at Glenmore Lodge for 18 years and I work on all mountaineering activities and paddlesport, which covers white water kayaking, sea kayaking and open canoeing
What do you love about instructing at Glenmore Lodge?
What I love about instructing is I get the opportunity to meet lots of different individuals and in different environments, and I get to help them in their journey in those environments either be it on the mountain, on rock, on ice, or on rivers or on the sea. They can then get an idea of their own skill set, what they need and what they can do, and I can help open their eyes to the adventures that they can have
My work at Glenmore Lodge is very varied, and that’s what I really enjoy about it. It’s the variety; one week I could be on a river leading on advanced white water, the next an introductory course on white water, I could be training and assessing people on our National Governing Body Awards. It’s great to see people on that journey, I often see the same faces coming through at different levels on an award; I really get a lot of satisfaction out of that and I like to see the same faces coming back and seeing their progress as they work through the awards
What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?
So most years I do prepare in some way for winter and that might be getting out running more, and I also do a bit of training indoors – lifting my own body weight, pull ups and some free weights which all add to the endurance that you need on winter climbs. So when I get out there I’m ready for some of the extra stresses and strains that your body is subjected to on winter climbs
What are you looking forward to about winter?
I’m looking forward to winter this year; I’ve got a very varied program. If everything runs and we have the winter that we’d all like it’s going to be great fun. I’m looking to the snow arriving, the gullies filling, the return of the cold weather. I really like working in cold environments and the challenges that brings.
What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?
So, some of my favourite places for climbing… you can’t beat a big route on the shelter stone, its an amazing venue and feels quite remote even though its only an hour and a half to get in there and the routes are just out of this world. For winter climbing, I think you can’t beat Ben Nevis on a good day although the far north west of Scotland also has its own hidden gems. For rivers, I just think we have a world class destination and right on our doorstep is the river Findhorn and that has various tributaries which add to the fun. The river Findhorn, when it’s high, is as good as any big volume river around the world. In terms of sea kayaking, I think the north and the west of Scotland is just world class and you can choose any venue and I especially like the summer months when there’s lots of sea birds around. Places like Handa Island and out to the Shiants, and even out to St Kilda have to be right up there as some of my favourite places to paddle in a sea kayak.
Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?
I honestly couldn’t tell you one favourite adventure but if I had to give you at least three, my three would be: I spent 13 months sailing around the Atlantic on a yacht many years ago. Number two would be a sea kayak expedition with one other person around Stuart Island in New Zealand, and that had everything imaginable you could want in an expedition from challenge to success. And then finally I would say that right up there, is I did a solo paddle out to St Kilda and back – which was pretty special!
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Keep an eye out on our social media and blog to meet the rest of our instructional team