For the first time in years we drove to the Alps. No more paring the gear down to the Easyjet 20 kg. limit. Just throw it all in! After a day and a half of driving we arrived in the Zinal Valley. A five hour walk trough thunder, lightening and rain to the hut was rewarded the next day with fine weather. Our luck ran out there though. After the usual Alpine start, an unwelcome 5.00 am breakfast we headed off for a 780m AD climb on Besso just to the rear of the hut only to get completley exhausted by boulders and glacial morraine without actually setting foot on the mountain.  We headed back to the valley with our tails between our legs. Continue reading ALPS 2012 →

Jon Massey was heard to pass the above comment after a second day of good weather in Wales.
We drove to the foot of Tryfan on the Saturday morning and after slogging up to Heather Terrace proceeded to make a start on Second Pinnacle Rib. However some twenty feet up I was most unhappy. The cry of “This is never a v diff.!” was made and I hastily backed off. Moving along the terrace we settled for First Pinnacle Rib and made much better progress. Continue reading ” Basically it was awesome ! “ →

Early last Saturday Ian Archer and I headed south down the M5 bound for the Brecon Beacons intent on climbing a winter route on Pen Y Fan.
The are five gully climbs between grade 1 and 3 and a rib at grade 2. An hour and a half of sweat and toil brought me to the foot of the mountain. Ian, the youngster, on the other hand had skipped along easily.

Continue reading Pen Y Fan →

Saturday 28^th January

On the Friday evening inspired by a reasonable forecast Alan Hardie, Jon Massey  and Iain Carter headed up over the border for a weekend raid in Glencoe.

We slept inside and outside the car at Loch Lomond and after a good four hours sleep continued onwards arriving at eight. The objective was Summit Gully a 450 metre grade 1 snow and ice climb, a worthy tick in anyone’s book. Continue reading Summit Gully, Stob Coire nam Beith →

On January 2nd, Karl, Tom and Sarah L walked up into Stob Coire nan Lochan above Glen Coe to see if we could get some winter climbing done. It had snowed to quite a low level over night, and as we got into the corrie we were wading through two foot drifts, an indication as to just how much snow had fallen higher up. This put paid to our plans of checking out the gullies, as the risk of avalanche would have been too great, and we’ve have had to swim up the gullies, rather than climb them. Continue reading Dorsal Arete →