Now available for booking:
2-day beginner's First Steps in Winter: 31st January / 1st February
1-day beginner's First Steps in Winter: 14th March
1-day beginner's First Steps in Winter: 15th March
Depending upon snow conditions we may add extra dates during the season.

All courses take place in the Cairngorms and are delivered by a qualified instructor on behalf of Mountain Aid.

https://www.mountainaid.org.uk/winterskills.html

What a busy weekend we had at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival. 
We had our usual Mountain Aid stand selling buffs (a bargain for £5) and free pens and chocolates. This year we introduced some quiz cards to enable festival attendees to test their hill knowledge (or lack of...). These proved popular and many people went away having learned a new totally useless piece of trivia!!
But the big thing this year was promoting Skills for the Hills 2026. Wow. What a response. So much positivity and interest from people. We also had the chance to speak to some of the organisations and individuals who are going to be supporting us at Skills for Hills. Oh, and we twisted some arms to get a few more organisations involved. To quote myself "we achieved more for Skills for the Hills in 24 hours than we did in the last 24 weeks". Well, at least it felt that way.
Finally, we also opened up booking for our winter skills courses and advertised these at the event.

And there were also some good films being screened at the event including Kevin Wood's "Lorraine's Ups n Doons" featuring Lorraine McCall who is going to be our keynote speaker at Skills for the Hills.

With all the excitement around planning for Skills for the Hills 2026 and attending the forthcoming Dundee Mountain Film Festival, we forgot to tell you that we have uploaded our latest annual report and accounts to our website. This is the formal document that we submit to OSCR the charity regulator each year.

PS We are also busy working out dates for our Winter Skills courses - more on that later.

Mountain Aid wishes to thank both the Scottish Mountaineering Trust and The Munro Society for grants and donations towards the costs of hosting our Skills for the Hills 2026 event.

We're delighted to be able to tell you that we have the following presentations lined up for Skills for the Hills (in no particular order)

• Lorraine's Up n' Doons - presented by Lorraine McCall - Lorraine Mccall 221 corbetts and now 231 Grahams
• Behind the Scenes of Mountain Rescue - presented by Alison McClure of Tayside Mountain Rescue Team
• Inversion Hunting - presented by Garry Nicholson of Mountain Weather Information Service
• First to Aid: Easy as ABC - presented by Neil Hamlet of Ochils Mountain Rescue Team
• Rights and Responsibilities when accessing the Hills - presented by Rachel Taylor of ScotWays
• Navigation: the Compass and beyond: a modern toolkit - presented by Max Hunter of Mountaineering Scotland  

​All these presentations will be taking place in the indoor Pathfoot Lecture Theatre at the University of Stirling. 

We will bring you news of other activities at Skills for the Hills very soon.

​Save the date - Saturday 7th March 2026
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