Originally the Meeting had been planned to take place in the Börzsöny mountains in Hungary, because it’s a great place do some trail running. But because a  lot of people notified us that they would prefer July/August instead of the end of June due to their exams, we moved the Meeting to the beginning of August to Aggtelek, where the Aggtelek Cup amateur climbing competition is taking place. We choose Aggtelek as trail running is also great around there, it’s easily accessible from Budapest by car, and anyone interested could also join the climbing in their free time. This also meant that instead of the June heatwave we hit the August one. This made any activities during the day less comfortable (we even had to cancel some group runs due to that), but resulted in nice evenings after the workshops spent around the open fire chatting with all the participants till late at night. We honestly feel that once again the meeting ended in a great success, with lots of opportunities and ideas discussed and friendships built.

The main goal of the meeting was to discuss and share our experiences in the topics:  increase partaking in ski touring, ski mountaineering and ski alpinism in their countries, and if there is a theoretical limit to the number of people involved in  these sports (e.g. from the safety or environmental protection point of view); increase partaking in trail running and if there is a theoretical limit to the number of people involved in this sport (e.g. from the environmental protection point of view); involving young people into Skimo sports; social inclusion and gender equality in Skimo sports, social aspects of Skimo sports (e.g. friendships and community building aspects); financial aspects of Skimo sports; possible funding opportunities for Skimo sports; the importance of  networking in Skimo sports; health issues and benefits related to ski touring and trail running; ski touring and trail running as complementary all year round cardio sports; promoting healthy lifestyle through Skimo sports; physical training methods, techniques and systems for ski touring and trail running; trail running as a perfect basis training for ski touring; increase partaking in  ski mountaineering and trail running competitions; competition organizing; increasing the number of voluntary activities in Skimo sports; environmental protection issues related to Skimo sports. The main events of the meeting were round table like discussions. These were always led by one of our members with well directed questions, this way all the participants could share their opinions and experiences on the topics. It turned out to be a great way to share experiences and promote discussions. Other then that we had a number of outdoor activities, including trail running, climbing and caving. During these we shared our experiences, with a special emphasis on the different training methods that are used in each country. We also gave a short lecture to our guests on the situation of Hungarian mountaineering and related education. As we got a really good mix of participants with very varied multi-sport backgrounds, including climbers, trail runners, kayakers, ski mountaineers, guides and outdoor coaches and people from volunteer rescue services, it turned out to be a really fruitful meeting. 

To our great happiness our Icelandic friends even managed to get some nice results in the climbing competition, congrats to that 🙂 

One interesting and great networking aspect of the meeting was, that all the meals were prepared with the help of all participants! This is something we will definitely keep as a tradition for the Icelandic meeting!