Firstly, the club structure is likely to change given the opening of the climbing wall Boulders so close to town. It means that people, especially experienced people, are a lot more likely to visit the Wall independently rather than through the social nucleus that was the minibus dependent trips every Tuesday and Thursday to the WICC. This might change our club make up and how we run trips in the future, but for the meantime we are just going to have to wait and see. A knock on effect of this is that everyone will be wanting equipment from the kit store at times outside the normal club run trips; we feel however, that this is likely to lead to most of our equipment going missing (which is currently a problem) and so have gotten stricter about the signing out of gear. Only committee members can use the union key now, the number of which has changed. Instead, we are working on the idea of having multiple keys at committee houses, if you are trusted and get your act together in reasonable time, one can get the key from a committee members house. It then has to be brought back to the house after all kit has been returned to union, before the next club trip. Failure to do so, without valid reasons, or abuse of the system means that you will not be allowed to take gear out in the future. We think this a fair system that will promote a decent respect for our collective kit!
On a more interesting note, the club will have a more competitive edge this year for some added enjoyment of our more experienced members, competing several competitions including BUCS (formerly BUSA), the new inter-Welsh bouldering league that is being set up, and hopefully getting a climbing Varsity up and running for Cardiff's annual battle with rival Swansea. Sounds epic for sure!
(The committee deciding things at our first meeting of the new academic year/ having a nice chinese meal)
Technically the club is going under a bit of a revamp as well, starting with it change to a new address domain at http://www.cardiff-uni-mountaineering.co.uk/. As the domain is finally under an independent server instead of the Universities, we are aiming to have access to to the html code so as to keep the webpage updated (the introduction page has already been redesigned and will be uploaded soon!) in a timely fashion in accordance with the changing situation of the club. Hopefully you will all see a facelift on it soon! In a similar vein, I have been personally trying to get us more representation in the Gair Rhydd which, despite our status as one of the biggest clubs in the union, is woefully inadequate in chronicling what our members get up to. So if anyone has any ideas for articles concerning CUMC send me an email and I can have a crack at writing it up, or try to pass your article along to the editors of student paper. If not, I can always post it on this blog for you! I'm sure somebody reads it! ;)
That's about all I have to say at this present moment concerning the club. I may in future, depending on the response of my fellow committee members and feedback from any readers, publish the minutes of our meetings just so that the ordinary club member has some idea of how their club is being run. Maybe a good idea, maybe not! I would like to sum up by concluding that that our onus this year will be to try and get as many people as possible climbing outside, leading confidently and acting safely. Basically, to fill as many people with the same intense love of climbing that we, as a committee, already have.
Jamie
Meet Sec
Cardiff University Mountaineering Club
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