Tuesday 17 February 2009

snow and ice

Well I've just got back from a week spent in the snows of bonnie Scotland and I have to admit the trip was a bit mixed in many ways (and I don't just mean the routes!)

Conditions could have been a touch better, in that we had too much snow! That's right, we had too much. The powder was deep deep deep and a real pain to walk through, in one case lengthening our walk-in from the usual hour up to three hours! Ok so part of that was because we picked the wrong set of footprints to follow and had to cut our own trail back across the corrie but nevermind...

The first weekend I spent climbing with a jolly nice chap called Patrick, a guy with whom I spent more time laughing than actually climbing (which was nice).
We headed up onto 'The Ben' on the Saturday, a legendary venue in which I had never previously climbed. What a place. Shame the walk-in took so long and we then wasted another couple of hours procrastinating over the likelihood of avalanches (we were scrambling up through fresh debris in places) and discussing how horrendous wading through waist deep snow was...
We eventually bailed on our initial route ideas because of the conditions and time etc. and ended up climbing the 'back-up' route, a classic Grade II called Ledge Route on Carn Dearg.
It was a nice enough route with some spectacular situations, but being a Grade II wasn't exactly the most interesting climb in the world (we basically solo'd it actually, it was so simple).

Sadly I made a couple of mistakes on the descent, the most notable being not putting away my walking poles on a rather steep snow slope (imagine the picture - ice axe in one hand, to self arrest with if I slipped, and walking poles in the other: clearly not the best idea huh?).
I slipped. I discovered that self arresting, for real, with only one hand on your axe really doesn't work...

Hurtling down this slope, the axe flies out of my hand when I try to dig it into the slope (did I think to let go of the poles at this point? Oh no...), the poles promptly got dropped and along came mistake number two...

So I have nothing in my hands, am sliding down a steep slope accelerating faster and faster - I need to stop myself somehow...so obviously I dig my feet in.

Idiot.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The next thing I know I've flipped head over heels, landed HARD on my backside and am still hurtling down the slope, this time head first and on my back and can now see the rather large and less than pillow-like boulders at the bottom of the gully getting rapidly bigger...

Long story short - I was ok, the depth of the powder at the bottom of the gully meant that I didn't hit the large boulders I saw heading quickly towards my head, I just stopped, snow everywhere along with a whole multitude of bruises. Patrick very kindly recovered my scattered possessions on his way down to dig me out of my crater. Oh how we laughed (later).

The rest of the week I spent over in the Cairngorms with Chris. We stayed at one of the MCofS huts which was actually really rather nice, even if the kitchen could be warmed by leaving the fridge doors open...

Conditions were no better than they had been on the West Coast, in fact they were arguably worse as there was more snow. We solo'd another Grade II called Fiacaill Ridge up the side of Coire an t'Sneachda as the corries themselves were simply too dangerous.
Most of the rest of the week was spent doing not much at all - I had a go at learning to ski on Wednesday but decided I hated it. Absolutely not a sport I want to get involved in. Nasty and painful (landing mostly on the huge bruise I had gained on my right buttock during Saturday's descent epic).


We decided that on Friday we were going to get into the Corrie, and we were going to climb something... so we did...

Chris and I had decided that we were going to try to do a Grade III of some description and the one that I settled on (bearing in mind that it was going to be my lead) was a route called the Haston Line on the Mess of Pottage.
That plan didn't last long, however, when I got to the base of it and faced a very steep drifted snowslope that had a Category 4 avalanche forecast on it (the scale only goes up to 5). I deemed climbing that route to be verging on suicidal even though it looked technically quite straight forward.
So after backing off Chris convinced me to try a nice but hard looking mixed line that some other climbers had just gone up...

I have never felt so sick on a route in my life. That sickness you feel when you can taste the metalicky twang of adrenaline in the back of your throat, that fear you feel once you have committed yourself to something harder than anything you have ever even thought of trying, that feeling when your whole body starts to shake as the lactic acid builds up in your muscles as you try to pull on an axe balanced on a tiny nubbin with your crampons solidly embedded in a 1mm thick layer of ice...

...that tangible wave of relief and emotion as you thump axes into deep, solid neve and step up to the safest, most comfortable belay stance you think you have ever seen.
The wave of warmth that envelops you as you lay back in the snow and shut your eyes, listening to the adrenaline burbling away deep in your veins...

The grin that takes over your whole body when your partner joins you, takes out the guidebook and points out that you've just led a Grade IV,5 onsight with complete coolness and composure, even though you've never even attempted anything anywhere near that level of difficulty before.

The sense deep inside as you realise that actually, maybe you are a climber after all...

Sunday 1 February 2009

enough travelling already!

Ok so I'm finally done. In the past month I have been in Austria (2 days), Sweden (2 days), Cyprus (2 days including a sunday), Spain (5 days) and 2 days away from home in the UK. None of these days have been short ones.

So, for February I am going into the office for a couple of days then going flying and climbing for the rest of the month (pretty much). Awesome!

First trip is up to beautiful snowy Scotland - I'm heading up on friday and meeting with another like-minded lass for some climbing over the weekend, then meeting another climber to do some routes during the week. Injury and weather permitting, it's going to be superb!!!

On the down side, Phil and I went climbing yesterday (indoors) and I managed to injure another one of my fingers. I really should know better than to entertain problems that involve a one handed, cut-loose dyno to a sharp jug. I don't think I've injured the tendon or pulley too badly, but it's certainly extremely painful.