Indoor Climbing Assistant

Overview

The Climbing Wall Instructor qualification trains and assesses candidates in the skills required to supervise climbers on purpose built artificial climbing walls and boulders. It is ideal for people who work at climbing walls or at venues with permanent or mobile climbing towers.

In addition to our experience of delivering the Climbing Wall Instructor award scheme, we are active and current Climbing Instructors instructing climbing sessions with various groups. We’re passionate climbers ourselves and the only thing we love more than teaching climbing, is developing psyched instructors who want to teach climbing.

One of the best things about our course is you get to visit 2 different climbing walls so you have variety in venues. In the evenings you can make the most of being in North Wales and get out for a little bit of personal climbing if you haven’t had your fill during the day!

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Course Details

To register for the scheme, you should ensure you meet the prerequisites set out by Mountain Training;

  • Be at least 16 years old.
  • Have an interest in assisting qualified instructors on indoor climbing walls.

Prerequisites for attending the course are as follows:

  • You must be registered on the scheme. – details here.
  • Experience in the basic skills (belaying, harness fitting, tying on).
  • 5 indoor climbing sessions. (There is no personal climbing requirement, you can just belay, but it is useful to have experience of climbing.)
  • Belayed on a minimum of 5 indoor climbing sessions.

What if I don’t have all the prerequisites yet?

The itinerary below isn't set in stone; by design we're flexible to adapt to different needs. Having our own base to run presentations and theory sessions allows us to move these sessions around in the day to work around busy days at the wall if there's wet weather driving people inside. Below is a rough plan for the course:

Day 1

Development and Assessment

  • Course Start - we'll meet at Basecamp at 09:00 for introductions, discussion of your experience, aims & aspirations over tea & coffee.
  • Scheme Introduction - we'll chat a bit about the scheme and how it sits within the other qualifiations.
  • Collect & Check Kit - technical equipment handed out and personal kit check.
  • Travel to Climbing Wall - we’ll organise lift-shares to reduce impact and ease parking. We're lucky to have a few good and different sized climbing walls within striking distance.
  • Indoor Climbing - the climbing environment, warm-ups, basic movement and personal climbing skills.
  • Bouldering - we'll look at supervising bouldering with groups.
  • Coffee break - we'll discuss a bit of background knowledge and info.
  • Group Skills - we'll look at climbing equipment, fitting kit, tying climbers in & clipping-in and backing-up different belay systems.
  • Lunch break - we'll discuss a bit more background knowledge.
  • Teaching and Problem Avoidance - we'll look at teaching basic skills and how to avoid common problems that could occur.
  • Coffee break - we'll discuss how the assessed element will run and give you time to prepare.
  • Assessment - we'll check for understanding and competency by giving you some tasks and scenarios involving what has been covered in the day.
  • Individual Debriefs - we'll usually head back to Basecamp to go through assessment results and feedback over tea and coffee.
  • What Next? - we’ll discuss working as a Camping Leader along with outdoor career advice.
  • Course Finish - usually we’ll wrap up the assessment by around 16:30.

Llanberis, Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park


Basecamp – all our Eryri (Snowdonia) based courses start from our Basecamp, right on the high street in Llanberis. With great facilities for presentations and free tea & coffee.

Eryri (Snowdonia) Climbing Walls List – we’re ideally placed with lots of great climbing walls close by. Typically we’ll head to the Beacon Climbing Centre.

  • The Beacon Climbing Centre – a great facility just 10 minutes drive from our base in Llanberis with world class facilities – top roping, lead climbing, bouldering and auto belays.
  • The Indy Climbing Wall – a little further at 20 minutes is another great climbing wall with top rope and lead climbing, and a substantial bouldering area.
  • The Boathouse Climbing Centre – a little further at 30 minutes is this gem of a wall in Llandudno. Top rope, lead and bouldering on offer including some routes on real stone (wall!) and a good opportunity to see some of the other actvities climbing walls may offer such as the indoor caving and leap of faith challenge.
  • Plas y Brenin Climbing Wall – also 30 minutes away is the wall at Plas Y Brenin with a small lead / top rope area and bouldering. They have some great crack volumes for practicing jamming.
  • The Rock – Harlech Climbing Wall – 40 minutes away, a good little wall with decent height roped climbs and a small bouldering area.

World Class Climbing – whilst it’s an indoor climbing course, it would be a shame not to take the opportunity to get outside and experience some of the world class climbing here in Eryri (Snowdonia) before or after the course.

Accommodation – check out our Llanberis Accommodation Guide with top picks for all budgets.

We provide a detailed kit list for each of our courses so you know exactly what kit you’ll need and what we’ll provide. We appreciate kit can be pretty pricey so we’ll advise where is best to spend your money and what kit we really rate. We can provide all the group kit on this course.
Download the Kit List
We have also set up a 15% discount for Mountain Independence clients with V12 Outdoors. They are our favorite climbing shop with an amazing range of kit, super friendly and knowledgeable staff and they’re very local – exactly 100m from our door in Llanberis!
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FAQs

General FAQs

For more generalised questions please visit our FAQs page or for questions specifically relating to the Indoor Climbing Assistant course see below.

Indoor Climbing Assistant FAQs

Mountain Training specify that candidates must be at least 16 years old to register for this award. Under-18s will need to have parental consent to join.

Climbing Wall Entrance Costs are not included in the price though often our clients will receive a discount entering the wall with us.

You must be registered with Mountain Training for the Climbing Wall Instructor scheme.

  • Firstly you'll need to Register an Account with Mountain Training (if you haven't already done so) and then Log In to your account.
  • In the top left corner click on Register to register for the individual schemes.
  • Click on Scheme and select Climbing Wall Instructor.
  • Select Board - essentially it doesn’t matter which board but being based in Wales I’d pick Wales (Mountain Training Cymru) as they’re who we’re a registered provider.
  • Purchase Membership or Link Existing Membership, to the British Mountaineering Council, Mountaineering Scotland, or Mountaineering Ireland.
  • Then Pay for the registration.

Mountain Training set their prerequisites for good reason, having a good base of experience and understanding on which to build the knowledge and skills is vital. If you feel you need more input on technical skills such as belaying, a Rock Skills Introduction or Intermediate Course is a great way of developing technical skills whilst also getting a taste of outdoor climbing and furthering your climbing knowledge.

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