In reply to summo:
Yes, the importance of having a few solid partners is not to be underestimated, especially when it comes to big Alpine routes. It can take years to get to know the right people, depending on your climbing circle. There aren’t that many British climbers who are into (relatively) serious Alpine climbing and you need to get to know people before committing to anything serious - you can’t just arrange to do the Walker Spur over a couple of emails. Easier to find people for trad, winter and touring but even then you need a few solid partners for multipitch E grades and bigger Scottish routes.
Skiing - the people I know who live in Cham or have spent a winter season or more out there are pretty damn good (hardly surprising). The issue with living in Cham is it’s then hard to get the British trad and especially Scottish winter routes done. Whereas if you live in the UK, it’s hard to get the Alpine stuff done withint a few years without taking months off work... In some ways, this is the crux at the heart of the prerequisites, for me anyway.
I believe in not rushing these things too much. Once the goal (completed logbook) is in sight, you will get more focused on specific things where more experience is needed (a couple more ski tours, a few more Alpine mixed routes, a few more Scottish winter routes in less well travelled areas or whatever it might be - everyone’s experience will be different). Until then, by all means keep an eye on the prerequisites as guidelines but at the end of the day just go climbing and skiing, as often as you can and in as many different areas as possible.
It’s a good idea to download the application form at an early stage and start filling it in as you go along. That way you will clearly see where the gaps are and it will save you a lot of time filling it in retrospectively afterwards. Imagine filling in all the details for literally hundreds of routes and dozens of ski touring days in a few years’ time! I already had a list of most stuff in excel for my own records, plus my UKC logbook, but it wasn’t in the right format and didn’t have all the required details, so even from that useful base it took hours to get it into the required shape when I sat down to do it about a year ago. Regularly adding new stuff to the form since then has been pretty easy.
Above all, whatever you choose to climb or ski, make sure you are doing it because you want to do it for yourself, not just to get a particular tick in the logbook (of course some of it will be type 2 fun which you might not enjoy at the time but you’ve got to want to experience that as well). At least this has been my ‘guiding’ principle on this journey.
