The hall is warm, the map is spread across the table, and someone has just asked the question that most people were afraid to ask: what do you actually do when the clag comes down and you cannot see your compass bearing? That moment — the sharp, practical question from someone genuinely puzzled — is exactly what Cairnvost Howe's hill-skills evenings are built around.
We run these sessions monthly through autumn and winter, usually in Ballater or Banchory depending on where demand sits that month. They are deliberately informal: a dozen or so people, a volunteer instructor with real hill time behind them, and a clear agenda that focuses on the skills you actually need rather than the ones that look impressive in a textbook. There is usually tea.
The syllabus shifts with the season. In October we spend time on weather interpretation — how to read a synoptic chart, what a backing wind means on Lochnagar, why a forecast that says fine until noon can still send you off a ridge in horizontal sleet by eleven. In January the session might be almost entirely devoted to moving in icy conditions: microspike versus crampon, reading consolidated snow versus unconsolidated, the difference between a slope that looks worrying and a slope that genuinely is. Map and compass work is threaded through nearly every evening regardless of month, because navigation is the skill that underpins everything else out there.
The eastern Cairngorms and the Bennachie massif offer very different navigational challenges, and we use both as teaching ground. On Bennachie the paths are complex and the forestry confuses direction in low visibility; a confident walker can wander significantly off-line on a grey afternoon. On the plateau above Glen Muick there is almost no shelter and no landmark, and a bearing executed sloppily can cost you an hour or put you in the wrong corrie entirely. We work from local 1:25,000 sheets so the terrain feels immediate rather than abstract, and instructors deliberately anchor every technique to a specific hill or ridge the group might actually visit.
What surprises many first-time attendees is the breadth of experience in the room. Retired teachers sit alongside offshore installation supervisors home on a two-week break. Younger walkers who have been doing Munros on fine-weather weekends sit next to people who have not been on the high ground for fifteen years and are rebuilding their confidence carefully. That mix is not accidental. People learn better when the conversation moves between different kinds of experience, and instructors explicitly invite contributions from the whole group rather than working from one end of the ability spectrum down.
There is no entry test and no assumed baseline. If you have never held a compass, you will leave understanding what a bearing is and how to walk one in the dark. If you already have the basics, the session will sharpen your judgement about when and how to apply them. We ask only that you come curious and prepared to ask the question you think might sound silly — because it almost never does, and it almost always turns out to be the most useful one of the evening.
Upcoming dates and locations are posted on our website and social channels usually three weeks in advance. Places are free to members and heavily subsidised for first-timers. If you are trying to decide whether these evenings are for you, the honest answer is: if you walk in north-east Scotland and you have ever felt uncertain out there, they are for you.