Talisman's Mountain Diary: 26/12/10

Thursday, 6 January 2011

Fresh snow and NW winds

A better less windy and snowy day than forecast. I was expecting wind gusts of up to 60 mph and a lot more snow. It was colder today and yesterdays bullet poof neve had a soft covering of fresh snow but there was far less wind than on Wednesday!!

Kimbyl, Sandy, Rob and I spent the day looking at grade 1 gully ropework and climbed several pitches before we abbed back down off a rock spike and snow bollards.
Tomorrow the guys are out snow holing and navigating with Fi while I pack the ice climbing and ski kit for the Alps... :-)

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

New year new course

It's been a good start to the New Year with great climbing conditions for our first Winter Mountaineering course of 2011.

On Monday Fi was with Kimbyl, Sandy, Rob and Simon teaching some of the basic Winter Skills such as ice axe braking, step cutting, walking and climbing with crampons.

On Tuesday the guys were with me looking at basic ropework and rock belays at a local crag.

Today we were in a busy Coire an t-Sneachda digging snow belays and punishing our calves while cramponning up the rock hard wind scoured snow onto the plateau.

Unfortunately I forgot to put the memory card back into the camera this morning so I couldn't take many photos - needless to say there were teams of climbers and even queues on most of the classic routes!

Fi was over in Coire Laogh Mor with Jon and his son James looking at basic winter skills - full details on Fi's blog here.