the end...

I did it. I finally did it.

Last week I handed in my notice, I am leaving the wonderous world of work for a while, as of April 17.

Phil has got a work transfer over to mid-wales, so we're also going to be moving, probably some time near the end of May.
I'm hoping to get my PPL finished or at least close to before we move, otherwise I will be heading back over and staying with my Mum a fair bit until I finally qualify as a pilot.

My plans? A few months of not even considering working, but solely focussing on getting fit for a trip to the Alps in July (oh yes, bring it on!) and simply going climbing!

Awesome!!!

video blog: abseil knots and the double fisherman's

This blog is especially for Patrick - after a hard fought discussion about the best knot to abseil on (and after a mini tantrum where my overhand knot was snatched away from me and converted into a double fisherman's by said partner who was impersonating a very wussy little girl at this point).

climbing tales of woe

"What about that path over there?"
"I don't think so - look, it goes the other side of the river."
"It looks like it goes round to the right."
"Well we could try it, but it would be a very brave move - we could end up walking quite a way along it and then having to walk all the way back again."
"So you think we should go up here, in these footprints?"
"Yeah, they're going the right way."
"Ok, fine. I do think that wide, well trodden path looks like the one though. But, you have been here before so I trust you."

This discussion heralded the beginning of an epic journey, an adventure into the unknown. We were following the forlorn footsteps of a past stranger, choosing a course that would require us to overcome many hurdles - but not one of them would prove great enough to destroy our resolve and our mental fortitude.

"Are you sure this is the right way?"
"I can see a set of tracks cutting across to the base of the route just up ahead."
"Hmm."

Flailing and desperate, fighting to keep our heads above the fluid powder, we battled on, each step slowly draining the energy from our bodies as we dug deep and marched onwards. Gritty and determined, our eyes found focus on where our minds were carrying us.

"Umm, Lauren. You're not going to like this..."
"...What?"

Instinctively I knew the tremble in my partner's voice could only mean one thing...

"Umm well...you remember that path you saw earlier...?"



Patrick and I had set out to climb a route called 'E Tutto Relativo'. The line was undeniably beautiful - we had seen it from the road. I was also told that the walk in would be easy and
wouldn't take long - a pre-requisite as we had set out late (due to my own tiredness). This route was one that Patrick had been on before, but hadn't completed - a case of 'unfinished business' I guess you could say. And it did look beautiful.

Sadly though, things were not to go to plan that day. The first inkling I'd had of things not being
quite right, occurred when we decided to follow a set of footprints through deep powder, rather than the 'motorway' of a path we had been on initially.

45 minutes of slogging through waist deep powder only served to reveal that I had been right all along when we re-joined the main path! As you can probably imagine, I wasn't too happy.

Things hadn't been all bad though - I'd spent 45 minutes in absolute hysterics watching my beloved partner falling over repeatedly.

The next stage of the plan's collapse occurred when we finally got a good view of the route and both decided we didn't really fancy it after all (I do think we made the correct decision though - neither of us felt confident and the conditions on the line were somewhat questionable and it is, after all, better to be safe than sorry...)

So the plan evolved, and we walked back round the way we had come (on the path this time), to another nice looking route.

It became obvious that climbing simply wasn't going to happen when: a French guide with his student, who had been sat around at the base of the climb chatting the whole time we were walking up, decided to deliberately cut in front of us and take over the route. By the time he was finishing the route was in the sun and running with water - we walked away, peeved and frustrated, but still happy to have been in the mountains.

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...