Getting your Digital Logbook (DLOG) ready for a Mountain Training course.

Whilst it’s not the most interesting part of becoming an instructor or leader, getting your evidence ready for your assessor is an important task. A well stocked logbook of experience will help your trainer/assessor get to know you as a walker/climber/mountaineer and will help you to reflect on your experience and learning. Once qualified it could help you to evidence relevant experience should you find yourself needing to for employers, insurers or, in the worst case, a court.

1. What do I need to record? There needs to be sufficient detail for anyone looking at the record to understand the occurences that took place that day. We tend to distil that down into 3 parts:

   
   

   1. Where did I go? - This should be an overview of the route including significant places / peaks that were visited; saying "Dartmoor" or "Yes Tor" doesn't give enough detail, but "Meldon Car Park, Through the Quarry to Black Down, then on to Row Tor, West Mill Tor, Yes Tor and High Willhays before descending to Black Tor and Meldon reservoir." This gives a much clearer picture of the route and terrain that you will have encountered. If you are a climber then recording the route(s) from the dropdown menus is sufficient.

      
      

   2. What Happened? This is a chance to expand on Who you went with, what your role was (leader, assistant, equals, solo etc) and any events that took place along the way e.g "fell in a bog, had to change the route due to the wind, forgot my water proof trousers" etc.

      
      

   3. What did you learn? this bit is really valuable but often missed. Mountain Training do state that "50% of records must have reflective comments". It's worth noting that while your probably heading out to enjoy yourself, its also to develop your skills and knowledge in preparation for your assessment, so recording some thoughts on your day is super useful for future reference. what you record will of course vary and could simply be "was a really easy route" or "plan worked perfectly"; which are both useful reflections, but its also worth record what action you will take to improve if needed e.g."need to create a kit list so I don't foget to pack essentials", "a bullet point briefing card would be really useful for breifing the essentials without waffling" or need to remember to plan those tricky legs well and pay attention to the detail when nagivating at night".

      
      

      There is some further guidance on this from Mountain Training here.

      
      

2. How should I record it?

   1. Use the DLOG record system. Not everyone finds this easy to use, it can take a bit of time and practice to get used to it. There is a useful guidance video here.

      
      

   2. Upload Files. You can record your experience as a Word, Excel or PDF document, then upload it via the FILES tab on your DLOG. This is also an easy way to upload historic experience e.g in a notebook; by simply downloading a PDF scanner App onto your phone, then uploading this.

Tips for first timers:

1. It'll take a bit of time to gether your old records/memories and get them, in order; consider doing this over a few evenings or sessions.

2. Take a bit of time to understand the terminology used for your scheme. Quality Day, Quality Mountain Day, Quality Hill and Moorland Day and Quality Lowland Day all have specific definitions - make sure you record them accuractly. You can find the definitions here.

3. Historic Experience Counts too!! If you have experience of days routes from years ago that really influenced your journey to becoming and instructor/leader then put them in. if you are struggling to remember all of the detail put down the best info you have and use the description to explain any inaccuracies or why you have recorded it as you have as well as why it stands out from other experiences.