cogne ice climbing

hectic [hek-tik]
-adjective
characterized by intense agitation, excitement, confused and rapid movement, etc.

This week has been hectic. I spend a week away and what happens? One of our senior managers is sacked, the other is shifted from managing back to engineering and we're suddenly reporting to one of the company directors. Honestly, I'm not all that sure what my job really is anymore. Mind you, it doesn't seem to let up any - I spent 2 days travelling back and forth to Nottingham (managing a build) then drove a land rover to Plymouth and back in a day for some testing (wednesday consisted of approx. 10 hours driving, 4 hours working, several minutes wishing I did something else for a living and a few seconds asleep at the wheel...), and have just finished the week with a day of chasing around Coventry, wasting several hourstrying to access a computer system with the wrong passwords...

Anyway, on a more positive and interesting note, last Wednesday I flew out to Milan to meet up with Patrick, with whom I was going Ice Climbing in Cogne - a valley area in the Italian Alps.

This was a trip I had suggested whilst sitting in a cafe in Scotland after having spent days slogging through waist deep snow and not actually managing to climb anything - I needed some proper climbing! Expensive flights were booked, hotels and hire cars arranged and the next thing I knew Patrick and I were travelling into the mountains.

Wednesday was spent travelling, so on Thursday we headed out to climb the classic 'Cascade de Lillaz'. I didn't actually expect to be thrust straight into leading, bearing in mind my actual ice climbing experience at that point had been limited to seconding a single 10m ice pitch on Aladdin's Mirror Direct in the Northern Corries, and a session at the Ice Factor.
I hadn't even placed an ice screw before. Mercifully I was feeling reasonably confident, and once I'd watched the team ahead climb the first pitch, and had an encouraging chat with Patrick including a basic ice screw briefing), off we went. 4 beautiful ice fall pitches, and one slushy snow horror later and we were on our way back down and heading to the bar for a hot chocolate - Italian styleeee (if you've never tried proper Italian hot chocolate, you really, REALLY should).

I don't really know quite how to convey how incredible it felt to have led all 5 pitches of such fantastic ice, in such gorgeous surroundings and weather and with such a brilliant partner (more on that in a later post). So basically, I won't even try to say anything more eloquent than 'wow'.


Having had a fantastic day on Thursday, Friday was looking promising, that was until my stomach decided that it wanted to transform itself from a useful and well-loved body part to the demonic pain generator from hell.

Despite the horrendous cramps and sickness we walked in to a climb called 'Patri de Gauche'. Patrick led the second pitch via the most vertical section of ice I've ever seen - I got myself into a right state seconding it (I could try to justify my poor performance but I think it was simply a matter of being inexperienced and feeble, lacking technique - I have nothing but admiration for the way P led that thing in such a cool, calm and collected manner.)


Not feeling particulary brilliant my choice was to bail off the route after this pitch (yes, I was being phenomenally wimpish), so we did. One abseil and alot of faffing later we meandered back down to the beginning of what turned out to be the first pitch, a much easier angled affair involving a rather funky ice cave at the top. This pitch was to be my lead if I felt up to it - needless to say I had to have a crack at it and a little while later I was sat at the most wonderful belay in the world - a position akin to a nice comfy armchair atop a frozen waterfall with an alpine view, in the sun. Awesome.

Sadly this was to be the end of our actual climbing, due to a number of factors including faffing and incompetance, but mainly weather conditions.

It would have been nice to have gotten more done but all in all it was a great trip, with some great climbing and more laughter than is necessarily healthy (await another blog entry - the comedy is worth a written piece of its own!)

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...

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.

balls

Life is not good at the moment.
My knee is still gipping me a little but to be honest it's not bad enough for me to really worry, it's good enough to let me train at the wall and for this I am grateful. Unfortunately, right now this seems to be the one small thing I have to be happy about.

Work. Again. It's rubbish.
This week I spent Monday and Tuesday on an absolute horror job in Vienna. I'm genuinely not sure how we managed to walk away from that one without the customer skinning us alive...at least I wasn't alone for once (I usually take these beatings solo, so having another colleague there did make it much more bearable, even hilarious at times - if you didn't laugh about it you'd end up in tearful hysterics and in the local hospital...)
Wednesday Scott and I were going to go to the Peak District for some well needed therapy but the weather was sh*te. Bum.
Thursday and Friday I spent in Stockholm with some other colleagues - this time I wasn't seeing a customer but on a training course to enable me to work on the Stockholm Metro system. Slightly surreal having to take exams in Swedish when you haven't a clue how to even pronounce half the words...
Actually the Stockholm trip was quite nice, no pressure and we managed to get into the Old City for dinner in the evening (Elk Fillet steak is probably the nicest thing I have ever eaten).
Tomorrow I fly out to Larnaca (Cyprus), not to return until Tuesday. Yet another crappy job to be carried out solo. Great. Right now, I am feeling desperately nervous and panicky and just don't want to go - all this travelling and working alone really stresses me out, I hate it.

So this week - Austria, Sweden and Cyprus. No time for myself at all. It may sound glamorous, all this jet-setting, but believe me it's not. I would gladly swap it for a job cleaning out the crud from the gutters in Luton right now.

Oh, and just to top it all off, the selfish chav whose car I ran into last August has decided to raise a personal injuries claim against me.
So now I have a claim against me for damages of £1500 - £3000, because the precious little poppet apparently got whiplash. Compete bullsh*t. The list of my 'Negligences' has seriously wound me up, the lying beyatch.

So yeah, I'm loving life right now.

start of my winter season

It's been a little while since I last posted, for which I apologise. I guess I've just had other things on my mind.

Anyway, Phil and I went up to Scotland for a few days over new year - we had a really nice time actually. We managed to chill out for a couple of days in Dundee, and I went climbing in the Cairngorms with a nice chap called Rich.

Friday was the first day out and we went into Coire an t'Sneachda (easiest to get to, shorted walk in and thus the biggest queues for routes - the conditions that day were about as perfect as it is possible to get! Brilliant clear blue skies, no wind, good snow and ice - perfect!)
Anyway, we went and climbed the route 'Aladdin's Mirror Direct', IV, 4. Most of the route is easy grade I snow plodding, which we didn't even bother protecting. The central section is a much harder proposition however - a grade IV ice pitch. Awesome!

Now I must point out that I have never actually climbed pure ice like that before, and I've also never set foot on a route harder than a grade II/III...

Needless to say Rich led it with consummate ease (even after we had spent what must have been close to an hour waiting for the pair on the route before us to get off - honestly, I was frozen). I, however, found it absolutely terrifying and desperate. Felt amazing once I'd done it though and I guess the skills needed to climb ice are ones that I will gain with practice, so all is good really.

I LOVE WINTER CLIMBING, so much. Honestly it is just such an amazing feeling being out in the mountains like that. Awesome!

Sadly though, my second day out didn't go so well.
We were heading for Hell's Lum to climb a grade II pure ice route called the 'Escalator'. It looked amazing and so beautiful. Unfortunately I managed to catch my foot on a boulder during the walk in and twisted my knee. Stupidly I thought it would be ok and just carried on. An hour later, on the top of the Cairngorm plateau and walking down into Hell's Lum I was in absolute agony - we had to turn back.
I cannnot even begin to describe how painful the trek back was. Walking uphill didn't seem too bad but the walk out was almost entirely downhill, including a downclimb of the goat track (think really really steep hard snow). I'm not sure how long it took us to get back to the car park but I would guess it may have been approaching 2 hours. 2 hours of feeling like at every step someone was shooting a staple into the underside of my kneecap - every step (I'm not exaggerating, I was actually in tears with the pain).

I'm gutted that I didn't get to climb the route, but to be honest that really doesn't matter - I can always go back. Right now I'm just worried about my knee. The damage was done on Saturday, it's now Monday and it is just as painful as it was when I did it. Things do not look good...

Rich and the pair before us on the steep ice pitch of Aladdin's Mirror Direct (I took the photo whilst belaying).