UKH

I'm sure this has been posted a lot but I didn't see any recent posts on it. My friend and I want to get into winter climbing. We can both trad climb and have a few E1s under our belt. We are looking to go to Scotland towards the end of January and want to hire a guide to get us started on winter climbing. Ideally we'd do 2-3 days and hopefully come out of it being relatively confident to climb on our own in the future. Does anyone have any guides or guide companies that they'd recommend contacting?

'Introductory' winter courses can vary in my experience. I did 2 in the same year (I wasn't sure if I'd get a place on the Conville one, which was ran out of Glenmore Lodge, so I booked onto the Martin Moran one as well and ended up doing both). 

The Glenmore Lodge one was pretty un-spectacular. We mostly went up onto the plateau and worked on various techniques under great instruction; practiced nav, judgement, belays, walking in crampons, avalanche-awareness, ice-axe arrests, various techniques, etc. 

The Martin Moran one we were guided up some spectacular routes and mountains around the NW Highlands and had a pretty epic experience during the week but learned very little. 

If you want to learn the skills so you can go out and be independent, I'd recommend Glenmore Lodge or similar.

Super-reliable conditions in the Cairngorms as well. You could go to Fort Bill and get rained on for 3 days. 

The reality of booking with different companies is that a lot of them use freelancers such as myself, so in that sense it may not make much difference who you book with.

You could try putting out a message on one of the winter Facebook groups, or getting in touch with AMI, which should be able to hook you up with someone suitably qualified and experienced who can deliver to your needs.

A lot of us are already heavily booked this winter so I'd recommend getting on it soon in any case. Best of luck!

Paddy at: http://www.mountaincircles.com

I maybe a bit long in the tooth but I wouldn't say the Cairngorms has 'super reliable' conditions.  Scotland however is generally is a great place to be whatever the weather.

Agreed, I would disregard that. The Cairngorms are generally a bit more stable than the west coast, but the west offers a wider variety of venues to suit different conditions. If there's a really big difference on the day, you can always get up early and drive from one to the other.

You can send out a request for information to British Mountain Guides members here:

https://www.bmg.org.uk/activity/british-mountaineering/

Available guides will get back to you with what they offer.

https://westcoast-mountainguides.co.uk/