rock, heather, slime, rock, heather, loose bit, rock…

What on earth am I going on about this time? To be honest I’m not entirely sure myself – is this a blog post about walking? Is it an entry about climbing? Is it about scrambling? Well actually, it’s a bit of all three…

A few days ago (or was it longer? I forget…), on a random, boring, everyday Monday, I found myself without a climbing partner on a day where the sun was shining and all was lovely in the world, so of course I had to go out. I had also just acquired a rather lovely new pair of boots (La Sportiva Trango S Evo if you must know) that I was desperately wanting to try out. Now, for me these boots are quite the investment – for starters they cost me a small fortune, even with a fairly hefty discount (and for someone who is currently jobless, spending a small fortune is no trivial matter), but they also mark a changing point in my life, for you see I have grown as a person. I am now learning to embrace the mountains for what they really are, a stunningly beautiful environment that we should not ever take for granted or underestimate, and not merely a ‘playground’ for the enthusiastic rock climber.

In a round-about way what I’m trying to express here, is that I’m beginning to appreciate simply being out in the mountains without necessarily having to be tied into the end of a rope, focussed entirely on the small patch of rock in front of me. I will never be a hill-walker, but I am now beginning develop the skills of the mountaineer – the ability to navigate, to cope with weather of all types, the confidence to cross both simple terrain and the complex, I am beginning to feel at home in the mountains and in the wilderness. No longer am I scared to venture away from the path and discover things for myself, no longer do I feel the need to follow in the footprints of others – the wilds and the mountains are areas of beauty best appreciated with a confident, exploratory bent.

With all that in mind, on that random ordinary Monday a little while ago (was it last week? The week before? Is this the beginning of early onset Alzheimer's?), I ventured out, away from the path and onto a tangled mess of rock, grass, heather and slime…oh and goats.

Welcome to the Rhinogs!

I’ve been out into the wilds of the Rhinogs before, the first time I picked an atrocious day and scuttled back to the car after nearly getting blown off of a small outcrop by gale force winds, the second time I dragged a tent and cooking implements out with me, oh and my husband.  This time however, I wasn’t out for a simple bimble, I was out to test out my new scrambling and alpine climbing boots. Armed with a vague description of a supposed Grade 3 scramble to the summit of Rhinog Fawr, I made my merry way to the Bwlch where I was meant to begin, and took my first look up at the day’s objective, the full horror yet to become apparent…

I mean no disrespect to the guys who wrote up this ‘scramble’ as I’m sure that deep down they are nice guys who don’t really want to torture and torment people, but seriously, why the hell is this route in a scrambling guide? If I had chosen to follow the description exactly I would have been met with the occasional short lump of rock to meander my way up, but mostly I would have been dealing with deep cavernous clefts of heather growing over bottomless boulder and scree fields, bogs, grass and lots of slime. Sorry guys – your route is crap.

I did make my way to the summit, and I did sort of vaguely follow the general gist of the scrambling route, but I needed to touch rock more, I needed to add interest – so I chose the hardest possible lines up the short rocky buttresses, turning a supposed grade 3 scramble into what I would describe as a ‘meandering mountain game of snakes and ladders, punctuated with the occasional section of VDiff rock climbing’. Yes it was a new route, no I probably wouldn’t ever be able to repeat it, although the two or three climbing sections would probably be identifiable, but in all honesty I could never recommend this to anyone who doesn’t have a fetish for mountain mankathons.

One of the few [very] short, steep sections I chose to tackle head on – this may or may not be one of the bits I would have deemed to yield a couple of moves of Diff or VDiff, I honestly can’t remember. 

Some of the day’s highlights included my encounter with one of the herds of wild Rhinog mountain goats, playing with butterflies, prodding huge caterpillars and of course, reaching the summit trig point to find a load of manky old prayer flags tied to it…

WTF? Prayer flags? I don’t get it, I really don’t, but needless to say I cut down and removed these offensive pieces of unnecessary litter. Seriously people, this kind of thing just isn’t appropriate, especially when left in conjunction with empty bottles and crisp packets…

The goats and caterpillars were cool though.

bumblie’s bimbles

So today I went for a nice walk up above Dinas Mawddwy. I’d been up in this area before when I went for a hack up Waun Oer, but today I took a more sedate approach and just headed around the rim of the horseshoe for a bit. Lovely.

Have some pictures.

 

I was also testing out my new, smaller ‘walking’ and short day rucksack, a Millet Prolight 27, and I must say I do rather like it. It’s a good size, well built and should withstand a reasonable amount of abuse, and it’s comfortable. It does (currently) have a couple of little things that irritate me – the cord-lock for the main drawcord was some stupid ponsy wedge thing (ok so this one isn’t current as I changed the cord'-lock the day I bought it), it has thumbloops (WTF are these FOR??! Seem like a great way of improving the odds of landing on your face if you fall over), and it has a somewhat useless little zippy pouch on the left waistbelt (not only is it pretty useless and badly positioned, but the stiffened zip pull catches on my sleeves as I walk!). Needless to say, I will be enjoying a little session with the scissors and a gas lighter later on…

sunny wild camping in the Rhinogs

Phil and I took advantage of some of the good weather we’ve been having to head out into the wilderness for a nice walk and wild camp. Now, I should say that this is the first time I’ve done a ‘serious’ walk like this with Phil, and as such it was a great experience – not really my style of walking as I normally view hill walking simply as a means to gain fitness, not an end in itself, so to simply walk to enjoy the experience and the surroundings was a refreshing change.

We parked up at the farm on the Dolgellau side of the Rhinogau and proceeded to make our way through the forest and out into Bwlch Drws-Ardudwy, one of the two major mountain passes (the other being the ‘Roman Steps’.

Here we enjoyed a leisurely lunch, trying out a cheap couscous ‘bivi meal recipe’ I’d concocted, which was ok but not good enough to write about or even do again – still, all experimentation is good.

Next we headed up the side of Rhinog Fach towards our intended camp site at the side of Llyn Hywell. The weather up until this point had been simply stunning – sunny and warm, not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately, upon reaching the upper Llyn, a bitterly cold wind coming across the lower ridge took hold, seeming to suck away all the sun’s warmth.

We wandered round a bit before settling on the most sheltered spot, which as per normal universal laws, was of course the first one we’d looked at. Abandoning our sacks here we proceeded to head up to the summit of Rhinog Fach, admiring the South Ridge from the path up. The South Ridge looked like a mighty fine, if not hugely long, scramble, but upon returning home and consulting the guidebooks turns out to actually yield a route graded Severe! I shall have to go back.

Phil with the mighty Rhinog Fawr in the background

The South Ridge of Rhinog Fach, a gritstone mountain Severe!

Y Llethr, the highest point in the Rhinogs, from the summit of Rhinog Fach 

Upon descending from the summit and making our way back across the pathless boulder-field at the side of the Llyn, we re-found our bags and proceeded to pitch the tent in winds which had by now gotten quite strong. This is my excuse for why I proceeded to ‘enjoy’ one of the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had in the tent – I’d managed to position the tent with my head in a hollow, and Phil’s on a tussock. Swapping sides just meant I went from feeling light-headed to having the tent flap in my face on the wrong side* as I tried to avoid the lumpy tussock I now had possession of.

I re-learned another valuable lesson that night – leaving behind my ipod and/or a book of some kind was a mistake. I had hoped to sit out and watch the sunset and then stare at the stars in the crystal clear sky for a while before going to sleep, but the bitterly parasitic wind put paid to that idea and the lack of conversational topics we hadn’t already covered a million times before made for a rather stale time. Needless to say I did not sleep well either.

Enough of the whinging though, the morning was truly beautiful, still windy but the sun did its best to fight off the worst of the cold as we aired our sleeping bags in the breeze and had a very leisurely session striking camp.

We gave up on the idea of heading up Rhinog Fawr as well after I managed to get a bit of grit lodged in my eye so I spent the first 3 or 4 hours of the day in agony. Note to self: buy a tiny little mirror to pack in the first aid kit.

So day 2 was spent meandering back down the Bwlch and around towards the Roman Steps, then back through the forest to the truck where our first thought was of brewing a nice cuppa using the MSR petrol stove Phil keeps in the back of his bright red pickup. This was, on the surface, a perfectly simple and good idea. Unfortunately I decided to try to be helpful and get the stove going…

To cut a long story short, I had forgotten about the priming procedure you have to go through with the MSR, and so proceeded to light the stove with the fuel supply on, which then led the thing to start dripping petrol from the base of the stove burner, and onto the tailgate of the truck (should have put the damned thing on the floor, but we always do it like this and have never had this issue before). It took me a few seconds to realise what was dripping from the stove, by which time, fairly predictably, the whole lot had caught fire. Yes, I set fire to the truck. Thankfully Phil wandered over at this point, just as I had registered what was happening, turned off the fuel supply and started to flail and cry out “it’s burning, it’s burning, it’s all on fire!” in the most useful way possible. Before I’d had time to pull myself together and deal with it, Phil grabbed the fuel bottle and dropped the stove to the ground where it burnt itself out without doing any more damage. Fortunately I hadn’t actually set fire to the truck, just a small patch of the tailgate, oh and the stove’s stuff bag, and so casualties were minimal. We did then proceed to light the thing properly with it on the ground, and brew our cuppa. It was just a shame Phil elected to try using some ancient milk powder rather than digging the UHT sachets out of my rucksack, and the tea ended up tasting like rancid, rotten bin water.

Wild camping is always an interesting experience, and each time I do it I come back with lots of thoughts and ideas about how I could do things better, and this trip was no exception. I may well put a blog entry together with some of the better little tips I’ve picked up over time, and some of my thoughts on some of the more pointless things we seem to end up doing.

*Yes, there is a right and a wrong side – I am a particularly awkward sleeper at the best of times, and I need to be on my side of the bed/tent otherwise things just don’t feel right.

photo blog: an alpine Cadair Idris

I can’t really be bothered to articulate any interesting words for today, so I’m just going to post a selection of pictures I took when I went for an aerobic beasting style walk up Cadair Idris, again. I like to think of this mountain as my own personal wild gym – today I did about 3hrs of hard cardio whilst carrying lots of unnecessary kit (axe and crampons really weren’t necessary, despite what snow there was being bullet hard). Anyway, enjoy!

a gorgeous day at last: cadair idris

Cneifion Arete

Ok so today I decided against going cragging with a random UKC’er who hasn’t let on what sort of grade he climbs as yet (I at least need info before I commit to climb with someone), but instead chose to do the 1 3/4 hour drive up to Ogwen and repeat the Cneifon Arete.

Ok so my original intention was that the next time I did this route I would continue it on and descend via Bristly Ridge as per Patrick’s [excellent] suggestion. Today that wasn’t to be as I didn’t manage to crawl my way out of bed until some time around 11am, after which I needed breakfast and then to pack my ‘sac. All this meant that I didn’t actually arrive at Ogwen Cottage until just before 3pm. Shocking I know.

Anyway, I headed out at bang on 3 o’clock and made fairly reasonable progress up past Llyn Idwal and to the base of the route. I say reasonable progress because it wasn’t a blistering pace by any means, but neither was I ‘hanging about’.

Now, the weather of late has been taking the mickey somewhat, one minute it’s sunny and the next it’s hooning down. Today was no exception – I started out in overcast but pleasant conditions, slightly boggy underfoot because of all the recent rain, a bit of a breeze with the odd strong gust, but nothing to write home about. I did most of the walk-in in just a T-shirt. This was soon to change…

No sooner had I committed myself to the initial ‘Mod’ section of the route, it started to rain. 'Twas a deceptively pleasant drizzle initially – the kind of lazy, unassuming type of rain that usually stops after a couple of minutes, like the clouds just can’t be bothered any more. Unfortunately I think the clouds were watching me and were in need of a laugh – they patiently waited for me to be completely committed to the route (Mod followed by Grade 3 scramble), and then proceeded to slowly and very patiently drench everything, including all my underwear.

I just had to keep telling myself that this was the entire point of the exercise – I need to be able to handle committing positions in crap conditions, and seeing as this was exactly what I’d got, that really, I should be grateful for the training opportunity. Somehow though, these thoughts were struggling against the other thoughts my mind was spontaneously producing against my nobler wishes: “I want to get off”, “if I slip this is going to be really, really bad”, “these walking boots are completely useless on rock this wet and slippery”, “what the hell am I doing this for?”, “where would be safe to sit whilst I wait for the Mountain Rescue Team?”, amongst others…Sadly my other attempts at focussing on more important issues like my pile of ironing still left to do, and which recipe for fruit scones I’m going to try first failed to improve matters…

On a serious note though, my walking boots really are not all that brilliant for scrambling, they are adequate, but not brilliant. My gorgeous new 5.10 approach shoes are, however, completely wonderful – I’ve even climbed VS in them! So why wasn’t I wearing them? Especially when this kind of thing is exactly what I bought them for? Simple answer: bog. They do not handle bogs, puddles or streams at all well (they’re just a trainer for goodness sake, what do you expect?). Hence today was most definitely a walking boot day as much of the approach and descent had become nothing more glamorous than a bog-trot.

Thankfully, climbing with a rucksac is a fairly familiar and standard exercise and so this didn’t prove to be much of a hindrance.

Once I’d gained the top and the power of positive thinking had finally proven its worth, the descent became the fairly obvious next priority, and I decided, being of a rather competitive nature, to see if I could catch the guys in front (who had just been finishing at the top of the Arete as I had started at the bottom). This was a stupid idea really as they were quite a long way ahead, nevertheless, not only did I catch them, I overtook and left them for dust! YES! Small victories…I think that maybe I was in need of something to take my mind of the fact that the rather impressive resistance put up to the rain by my softshell had finally failed and I was beginning to get damp…

So what did I learn from today’s experience? Well, to start with, when I pull my finger out I can actually impress myself: I was quite pleased with the way I handled the utterly sh*te conditions, and also very pleased with the (to me) remarkably quick time I made – 1:45 car to car.

Kit lessons:

Contact lenses are AWESOME in cruddy conditions like this. Today I was using the first of my five trial pairs to see how they would cope. Let’s just say I’m converted. There were times on the Arete where having totally misted and water covered glasses would not have been ideal. I’m actually still wearing them now, some 11 hours after I first put them in and my eyes aren’t complaining even the tiniest little bit, so I think I may well be investing…

Softshells are also AWESOME. But then, I’ve been saying that ever since I bought my rather expensive jacket. It’s not just that it was expensive though – it’s proven it’s worth many, many times over now, being perfect for ice climbing, alpine climbing, general cragging and scrambling and even going to the pub (it doesn’t look shabby!). Today was its first real test in the rain though. Normally, if it’s raining I will put a waterproof on (as you do – this is after all what they’re for), but my location at which the thought “hmm it’s raining properly now, my waterproof would be a great thing to put on” occurred was somewhat less than ideal (i.e. I was tenuously back-and-footing my way up a sopping wet chimney groove) and by the time I was actually able to stand with a degree of stability sufficient to take of my pack, my jacket was already wet all over – so I figured I’d just leave the waterproof off and see how the softshell coped. Anyway, it did excellently. I think it must have taken a solid half hour of medium heavy rain for it to finally begin to lose the battle, probably not much less time than my waterproof anyway, given the conditions.