Climbing in the Pass

I had a day off yesterday and spent the morning indoors catching up on admin but then had a lovely walk with the kids in the afternoon followed by some evening cragging with Bryn in the the Llanberis Pass (Mabinogion E1 5c) and then a rescue team meeting so all in all a busy day.

ML Training in Trail Magazine

The May edition of Trail Magazine hits the shops this week and features a nice 6 page article on our ML Training course from last November. Trail chose us to train staff writer Dan Aspel and are splitting the feature over 2 magazines so the second half will follow next month. Have a giggle at some of the anecdotes as one or two of them have different endings to the ones I told :-) It all makes for a good read though and a useful insight for anyone considering doing their ML.

News from Arcteryx

Following my recent post I have heard back from Arcteryx, they have offered to repair the waterproof salopettes and re-enforce them in the areas of abrasion - good news and I look forward to sharing the outcome with you all.

Non Snowdon Horseshoe

The boys and I planned on doing the Snowdon horseshoe today but fell at the first fence when we found that Pen Y Pass was already rammed this morning! Instead we parked in the Pass and headed up the North Ridge of Crib Goch, across Crib Goch and Garnedd Ugain and then down the North Ridge of Cwm Glas to give our very own non-Snowdon horseshoe and a fine day out in beautiful weather.

NEW Video - A Winter in the Mountains 2014

Here is my latest film on Vimeo for those people who were struggling with the YouTube version: http://vimeo.com/user3099237/awinterinthemoutains

Evening cragging at Tremadog

You have to be careful typing evening cragging on a Mac as auto-correct changes it to evening dragging and thats something totally different! Anyway Bryn and I had a nice evening of cragging in the warm sunshine at Tremadog and here are some photos!

Bochclwyd Horseshoe

I have been joined for two days by Chris and Shane for an introduction to scrambling here in Snowdonia. It has been a stunning spring day with a bit of cloud first thing soon clearing to give some lovely blue skies and sunshine. Both chaps had done a bit of scrambling before and fancied the North Ridge of Tryfan. We combined that with an ascent of Bristly Ridge, lunch on the cantilever and a descent of the Gribin Ridge to give a lovely day out and plenty of grade 1 mileage. Its great to be home!

New Film - A Winter in the Mountains (2014)

This winter has been snowy, windy and wild - a real challenge to work and play in, finding venues to educate, motivate and inspire people and stay safe at the same time. There has been more snow in Scotland than I have ever seen before and Hamish MacInnes has been reported as saying that there has been more snow than he can remember since the mid 1940's. The weather improved as the winter went on and hopefully my short film captures the mood of the mountains and the fun we enjoyed along the way!

Arcteryx Waterproofs Warning

I bought a new set of Arcteryx Goretex salopettes last November. Those that know me will know that I rave about them as I have had 2 sets previously and they have been superb. Unfortunately this set started leaking quite badly within a few weeks of them arriving. They cost £380 and so I sent them back to Arcteryx to see what the problem was. This is the first time I have ever had to send a piece of kit back but knowing that Arcteryx put an emphasis on quality I was not concerned.

After several emails backwards and forwards they wanted to know what trousers I wore underneath my salopettes and here is the final response I got:

Hi Rob,

I see that the Patagonia Guide Pants have quite a few zippers and the sliders are what have most likely been causing this abrasion. Rob, our bib pants are more meant to be worn over base layers, not another pair of  technical semi waterproof pant such as a guide pant. Zippers and clasps will create raised areas under the Bibs and these areas will be more susceptible to abrasion. Rob, if I replace the pants for you, the same thing is going to happen unless you wear a different pant underneath. I can look at seeing if the original pants are able to be fixed, but as expressed to me, there were quite a few holes in the pants.

Lauren Ota

Warranty Service Representative

ARC'TERYX Equipment Inc

The end result - the salopettes I sent them have been recycled and I have no waterproof trousers. I was not aware that we should not wear soft-shell trousers under a hard shell so thought I would share this with you all to avoid you making the same costly mistake! For those days in the UK where you wear a soft-shell for the majority of the day and slip a hard shell over the top when it rains - you will need to buy something other than Arcteryx!

4000m Peaks on Skis

The boys and I spent the last couple of nights in the Brittania Hut above Saas Fee. This gave some great access to some of the stunning mountains around it and we bagged a couple of 4000m peaks on skis, with a bit of boot action to the final summit of each. Its incredible how efficient it is travelling on skis in winter, we skied from the summit of the Allalinhorn (4027m) to the resort yesterday in less than an hour! The day before saw us climb Strahlhorn (4128m) and enjoy an amazing ski descent. I am on my way home now and thats the end of winter for me, 24c in France as we drive towards Calais, bring on the summer!

Ski Mountaineering in Saas Fee

I am in Saas Fee this week with Dave, Sandy and Monty for a bit more ski mountaineering action. Its a funnily little town that I haven't been to before, its car free which is nice but seems to be lacking something in the way of atmosphere! The mountains are great though and we enjoyed over a 1000m of skinning to pick off a summit (Feechopf 3839m) this morning which gave us some great views across to the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc and some great spring snow in descent. Heres some piccies:

Chamonix Snowshoe Weekend

I have been running our Chamonix snowshoe course this weekend. Yesterday we headed up to Le Tour and enjoyed a walk to the Col de Balme and then upto the Tete de Balme (2333m). We had some hazy clouds and glimpses of views giving some beautiful light and plenty of time looking at the skills involved in planning and following routes on snowshoes in winter. Today we started from the village of Les Houches and climbed Mont Lachat (2115m). We timed it well as the clouds parted to give some magnificent views of the Mont Blanc massif as we reached the summit for lunch - a stunning day.

Chamonix

I have been in Chamonix this week with friend Dave for a week of climbing and ski mountaineering. I was on my own Monday so skied onto the Argentiere Glacier to check out conditions on the North Face of the Droites, it looked very black and a quick chat with the guardian at the hut confirmed it had not been climbed for a couple of weeks. March has been a very dry month here and April is continuing that theme. I enjoyed an afternoon of laps on the Grand Montets and met up with Dave on Monday night.

Tuesday saw us head onto the Aiguilles Rouges for a ski tour to allow Dave to get his ski legs and acclimatise a bit. We had a beautiful day in stunning scenery.

Wednesday saw us head up the Midi in the morning to check out climbing on the Tacul and to ski the Valley Blanche on another stunning day.

On Thursday we had to change our plans as we awoke to bad weather with many of the lifts closed due to high winds. We managed a ski tour by keeping low at Les Contamines but with a bit of rock dodging!

Today dawned glorious again after an overnight snowfall so we headed up the Midi once more to climb the Goulotte Lafaille on the NE face of the Tacul. We skinned up to the base of the route but were scared off by masses of spindrift sluffing down onto us and freshly accumulated windslab on the approach apron combining with very warm temperatures to create an avalanche risk we were not happy with. We did get another awesome descent of the Valley Blanche though!

This weekend I am running our snowshoe course here in Chamonix and then its off to Zermatt for a week of ski touring on 4000m peaks with friends Dave, Sandy and Monty.