What Counts as a Quality Mountain Day? How to Build and Log Your QMDs

The 40 Quality Mountain Day requirement is one of the biggest barriers people encounter on the road to the Mountain Leader Award. Not because 40 days is unachievable, but because there’s a lot of confusion about what actually counts and how to make the most of the time you’re spending on the hill.

This guide cuts through that and gives you a practical framework for building and logging your QMDs in a way that will hold up to scrutiny on assessment day.

What Is a Quality Mountain Day?

There’s no official MTUK definition that covers every scenario. The spirit of a QMD is this: a full, purposeful day spent navigating and moving through mountain or moorland terrain, where you’re making genuine navigation decisions and operating in a mountain environment.

It’s not a two-hour stroll to a viewpoint. It’s not a waymarked trail where the path does the thinking for you. A QMD is a day where the map and compass come out, where conditions require you to think about your route, where you’re genuinely in mountain terrain and moving through it with purpose.

In practical terms, most full hill days in the UK mountain areas will qualify. The question isn’t usually “does this count?” but “am I recording it in a way that demonstrates its quality?”

What Terrain Counts as Mountain or Moorland?

The Lake District, Snowdonia, the Scottish Highlands, the Brecon Beacons, the Peak District moorlands, Dartmoor – these are all valid. The Cairngorms plateau, the Cheviot Hills, parts of the Yorkshire Dales – also valid.

A walk entirely on a low-level footpath through farmland doesn’t count. A coastal cliff path doesn’t count, even if it’s challenging. The terrain needs to be mountain or moorland: elevated, exposed, navigationally demanding, and genuinely mountain in character.

MTUK expects a proportion of your 40 days to be on mountain terrain as opposed to moorland. Track this as you go – if all your days are on moorland, make a conscious effort to get into steeper, higher mountain terrain before assessment.

What Makes a Day High Quality?

Not all mountain days are equal. A day spent on a familiar walk in good visibility with a well-worn path is a far less rich experience than a day in poor visibility, navigating across featureless moorland using compass bearings and timing.

High-quality days typically involve:

• Poor or changing weather – learning to operate in mist, wind, rain, and low cloud is essential for the ML
• Genuine navigation challenges – cross-country legs, contour interpretation, night navigation
• Route decisions under pressure – choosing between options, assessing conditions, reacting to changes
• Leading others – even informally, a day where you’re making decisions for a group is invaluable
• Unfamiliar terrain – returning to the same hill every weekend is comfortable but limiting

Push yourself to vary your terrain and conditions. A summer day with clear visibility on a popular ridge is fine. But 40 days of that won’t prepare you for assessment.

Night Navigation Days

Night navigation is a specific requirement for the ML, and days that include a night navigation exercise are particularly valuable. If your training provider hasn’t run a night nav session with you, build some in independently.

A night navigation exercise doesn’t need to be a full mountain day – an evening session on moorland with map, compass, and head torch counts. It helps to log these separately, noting the conditions and how you performed.

How to Structure Your Logbook

Your logbook is your evidence. Assessors will look at it, ask questions about specific entries, and use it to build a picture of your experience. A vague, undated list of “walked in Lake District” entries is not going to inspire confidence.

For each day, record:

The Basics

• Date
• Area / location (e.g. “Cairngorms: Braeriach approach from Cairngorm car park”)
• Start point grid reference (NGR, not just a place name)
• Who you were with (solo, friends, leading a group)

The Route

• Brief route description – start to finish, key waypoints
• Distance (approximate is fine)
• Height gain (this helps indicate the nature of the terrain)

Conditions

• Morning conditions – visibility, temperature, wind
• How conditions changed through the day – this is important; it shows you were reading the environment

Skills and Challenges

• Navigation highlights – any bearings you took, features identified, tricky sections
• Route decisions – did you deviate from plan? Why?
• Anything that went wrong and how you dealt with it

Reflection

• One or two lines on what you’d do differently, or what you learned

This doesn’t need to be an essay. A well-structured half-page entry per day tells a complete story.

Gear That Helps You Get Better Mountain Days

You’ll accumulate better QMDs faster if your kit is sorted. Poor gear leads to cut-short days, defensive decision-making, and a reluctance to head out in the conditions that generate the most learning.

Boots are the foundation. For the varied terrain you’ll cover across 40+ mountain days, a stiff-soled, ankle-supporting boot is the right call. The Scarpa Kailash Pro GTX is a solid choice for UK mountain terrain – supportive enough for all-day navigation days, durable enough to last through your entire ML build. The Meindl Borneo GTX is another popular option among people doing sustained mountain work: excellent foot support on uneven terrain, reliable Gore-Tex waterproofing.

If you’re on dry, technical approaches in summer, a stiffer approach shoe like the La Sportiva TX4 GTX offers more precision on rocky terrain without the weight of a full mountain boot. Worth having as a second option rather than a replacement.

Waterproofs that you trust make all the difference to how long you stay out in poor conditions. The Rab Kinetic Plus is worth the investment for training – it’s breathable enough for sustained uphill effort and genuinely waterproof in prolonged rain, not just a light shower. For cold and wet Scottish days, a fully seam-sealed jacket matters more than weight savings.

Compass and map case – get a Silva Expedition 4 or similar baseplate compass and use it on every day out, even when you could navigate by sight. The habit of taking and following bearings needs to be ingrained before assessment day. An Ortlieb map case or similar fully waterproof option protects your maps in prolonged rain.

A decent head torch is essential if you’re going to build in any night navigation days. The Petzl Actik Core is reliable, rechargeable, and bright enough for serious night nav work.

How to Build 40 Days Efficiently

Forty days is a minimum, and many candidates present with significantly more. But if you’re starting from scratch, here’s how to build that experience systematically:

Weekend days add up fast. Two hill days a month is 24 days a year. Starting with a solid base and adding focused mountain days to each year means most candidates reach 40 within two years of getting serious.

Target different areas. One mountain area is not enough. Get to Snowdonia, the Lakes, the Cairngorms, the Brecon Beacons – each teaches you different terrain, different navigation challenges, different weather.

Go in poor conditions. A wet November day on the Helvellyn ridgeline in cloud is worth three clear July days on the same route. You learn more when conditions are working against you.

Lead other people. Even informal days where you’re “showing someone the hills” are valuable for your logbook and your development. Group management starts before your training course.

Build in progressively harder navigation. Start with mapped paths and obvious features, move to cross-country bearings, then night navigation, then poor visibility route finding. Your logbook should show a journey, not a flat line of similar days.

Checking Your Progress Before Training

Before attending a training course, go through your logbook honestly and ask:

• Do I have at least 20 solid QMDs in mountain terrain?
• Am I comfortable navigating in poor visibility?
• Have I done any night navigation?
• Have I led others on the hill, even informally?
• Have I operated in genuinely bad weather?

If there are clear gaps, address them before training. The training course is where you refine skills, not build them from scratch.

For more on what specific skills you should have dialled before training, read our guide to navigation skills for Mountain Leader training. And when you’re thinking about kit for your mountain days, the Mountain Leader training kit guide covers exactly what you need and why.

The 40-day journey is the most valuable part of the ML process. Treat each day as a training session, not a box to tick.