Shackleton ESU – Mountain Activity Camp 2023 By Sean Edwards on 10th April 2023 (updated 10th April 2023) In Events / 0 comments From Thursday 6th April to Sunday 9th April, Shackleton ESU held our Mountain Activity Camp in the Peak District. After departing Crawley at 10am, we travelled up to Gradbach Scout Campsite where we pitched our base camp before eating dinner and preparing the activity days ahead. On Friday after waking up and eating breakfast we headed to Windgather Rocks where we spent the day in glorious sunshine doing single pitch top rope climbing. We also set up a speed climb to see how quickly they could scale a simple climb with times between 8 seconds and 16 seconds. After a full on day, we returned to the site for dinner and a well deserved rest! On Saturday we headed out bright and early to Edale to setout on our day of hill walking on Kinder Scout. 2 groups scaled up Grindsbrook Clough with some introductory scrambling. The third group headed up a slightly easier ascent so they could familiarise themselves with hill walking. After another glorious day of walking, we returned to the campsite for dinner and started to strike camp. On Sunday, we had our earliest start yet so we could leave site at 9 and be fully packed. Needless to say, Explorers dont like early morning when we woke them up at 6.15am! After striking camp, loading the minibus and trailer, we travelled to Poole Cavern for a cave tour before eating lunch and travelling back to Crawley. The camp was a great success, all of the Explorers behaved well however if we would have asked for one thing, that was warmer temperatures over night – having ice on tents and sleeping bag outers in the morning isn’t too pleasant!
