The fledgling Mountain Leader Training Association (MLTA) will hold its conference this November in Wales.

It’s a chance to share their knowledge and discuss latest developments in leading in the mountains. Venue is the National Mountain Centre at Plas y Brenin.

The association, which is open to anyone who holds a Mountain Leader Training qualification or candidates registered on a training course, is holding a talking shop on issues raised by leaders on the Saturday of 11 November and will follow this up on the Sunday with an informal day on the mountains of Snowdonia.

Don’t bother checking out the MLTA site for details. It’s less informative even than the other mountain leader training boards’ sites and only allows those eligible to join access if they fork out an extra £15, on top of their training registration fee and the obligatory membership of home mountaineering councils. Seems to grough it’s just a way of coining in more cash from candidates.

Still, if you do want to join the conference (at £50 a throw or £40 for MLTA members), you can get details on the British Mountaineering Council website, which costs nothing to access. Further evidence that the MLTA is on a money-maximisation exercise comes in the form of the various incentives for signing up extra folk into the association.

Topics under discussion at the North Wales event will include incident reports and lessons learned, teaching of navigation skills, developments in rope work for Mountain Leaders, multi-pitch climbing skills and fleecing the mountain leader community. OK, grough made up the last one.

According to one of the few parts of the MLTA website available to non-members, the association has a total membership of 112, a very small proportion of the thousands of mountain leaders and candidates in the UK. Nearly a third of its members appear to be professionals in the outdoor industry.

The site was free to access by mountain leaders until 1 February this year.