Dry tooling in our backyard

Another stroke of luck on a rare bad weather day, out walking, we saw a couple of people dry tooling just below our house! So we headed down there to check it out, awesome but too hard for our cumulative experience of 2 days dry tooling at M7. Luckily we made some pals with two local French climbers who kindly put a rope up for us to play. We love it! Visiting La Grave soon to tick some of the easier M4-6 routes.

Good Karma

On returning to the CIC hut last night, we were greeted by the London Mountaineering Club who had kindly cleared our route of the previous day for us and returned all our gear. What nice chaps!! So all was not lost (except the cheap camera). The next day didn't start off well, super high winds shook the hut during the night and squally blizzards were appearing. We decided to head back down and home. It took a little while longer than usual after a navigational error in Glossop resulted in a detour via Barnsley and Huddersfield back to Sheffield. Ooops!!

A mixed adventure this time

We set off again the following day from the North Face car park to the Ben. This time we had some camping gear ready to stay in the CIC hut overnight as the long walk in was getting tedious. After soloing up to the foot of our route, we then worked out we should have geared up earlier and spent a slightly stressful and uncomfortable few moments getting a belay together and tying in! The first pitch was great but we weren't sure if we were en-route. All the time I was wondering why this was a 3 star route (Number 3 Gully Buttress) until we got to the final pitch. What an awesome location for a few tricky moves with nothing below, what a drop!!!

 Thank goodness for the poor visibility which meant you could only sense the impending doom rather than being able to see all the way down to the Coire floor. The last pitch was absolutely superb and worth returning for again. We then got on with the task of navigating our way back off the top once more in whiteout. 

Winter not over just yet...

With rain looming over the Peak for a few days, Sari and I packed up for some winter fun in Scotland. We charged through the night to get past Loch Lomond before the road closure at 10pm, overtaking the work vehicles just in the nick of time. After a few hours sleep we woke early and set off up the Ben in search of Comb Gully (IV 4). Having just missed Rosie at the CIC we had to set off without a cuppa into the Coire. 

 The climbing itself was great but felt really full on due to the dump truck at the top chucking huge loads of spindrift down on us. Like a giant snow shower all day! My goggles were too scared to come out of my sack so they stayed safely inside and I resorted to climbing blind! In addition my hood came down to allow me to gather a nice snow batch in the back of my jacket and all around my neck - check out the huge snowballs that gathered on my plaits. After applying liberal amounts of hand cream at the belay, (scars from previous week in Peak) a pesky ice screw then slipped out of Sari's hand. I also couldn't retrieve a runner slightly before the belay so that got left behind too. And somewhere buried in the spindrift of that fateful belay is my camera!! 

Still the climbing was ace and we did well given it was our first day out together in winter. 

The thaw

Not much to say. Temperatures rise, everything goes soggy and I'm off home. The shiny new ice screws I bought will have to wait a week until I'm in Iceland.

Chairlifts and ice screws

The highlight of the day was wondering how to get on/off the chairlift with our climbing sacks and walking poles whilst retaining some dignity!

First obstacle out the way there we were gearing up with everyone else. Only to discover the guides mostly racking up ice screws. Well with one ice screw between us (which we left in the car), we wondered what we were doing up there!

Also while we were busy chatting away to people all the other climbers were overtaking us and establishing themselves at the base of the routes.

After blagging one 'get out of jail free' ice screw from a friend and with people now queueing for the prize routes, we thought it sensible to stick to something easier and did a lovely little route called the Web.

A big day out

It felt like graduation from mountaineering school as Isi and I topped out on Ben Nevis just as it was getting dark (not to mention the thick clag). Looking forward to the long and lonely walk back to the car, compass in hand, and counting our paces.

After a leisurely walk in that morning and much deliberation over the guidebook we found ourselves on a route called Green Gully. This was not our intended destination as we were after Number Three Gully Buttress an easier route much further over (oops). 

However, the first steep ice pitch looked so inviting we gave it a go. So a gentle warm up to the season ahead started out with 4 great ice pitches, we loved every minute of it. 

The sociable banter at the belay made up for the lumps of ice (and water bottles) raining down the route from climbers above. Never mind the fact that I managed to drop a pair of gloves and a belay plate during the course of the day! Luckily our navigation is better than our route finding skills and we made it back to the car park later that evening without getting lost.