Mountain Trainin Picture

Mountain Trainin Picture

Sunday 22 April 2012

Lake District mountaineering

Finally after a treacherous trip to North Wales I was keen to make up for it by having a good week in the Lakes with a good group of people.

During the week long eXped we completed a 37km round trip spaced over 3 days with 2 wild camps at Grisdale Tarn and Keppel Cove respectively.

We managed to bag 13 summits, had lunch in a bivvy cave half way up a mountain crag, experience some changeable weather with snow on all the high summits, leave 2 friends behind who traveled to Scotland for the summer to work, but best of all I some how by chance bumped in to my girl friend on the summit of Helvellyn (England's 3rd highest peak ).


The summits we managed to reach are:    Angletarn Pike
                                                             The Knott
                                                             High Street
                                                             Thornthwaite Crag
                                                             Stony Cove Pike
                                                             Fairfield
                                                             Hart Crag

                                                             Raise
                                                             White Side
                                                             Helvellyn Lower Man
                                                             Helvellyn Summit
                                                             Nethermost Pike
                                                             Dollywaggon Pike
The three day routes can also be found here at these links to the United Kingdom Hillwalking website:
                                                         
                                                             Day 1
                                                             Day 2
                                                             Day 3

Stony Cove Pike Summit 

View from Priests hole bivvy cave 

Helvellyn 2012

Thursday 5 April 2012

Blizzard...

Well the North Wales climbing trip which was meant to last at least a week sadly only lasted 2 days. 
The 1st day we managed to get on some slate and managed a few routes each before the rain came in and forced us to pack up and instead go on a venture through the immense slate quarries scouting out routes for the future.

 
The impressive Quarryman 'Groove pitch' in the huge 'Twll Mawr' sector of the slate quarries

The 2nd day we awoke to rain battering the tent, and sadly showed no signs of stopping, so we headed over to Holyhead Mountain where the weather didn't seem to be as bad, or so we thought. We managed to get our 1st taste of the impeccable Quartz climbing experience and managed to get a few more routes in before a storm wiped out any chance of further climbing. I say storm however it was more like a tornado, blowing us off our feet on the retreat to the car park and causing a massive swell out to sea with the waves looking at least 12foot in height.

We headed back to Llanberis where we made our selves some food before retreating to the pub in desperate need of shelter, a warm fire and some alcohol to help us forget the 2 miserable days we had . After a few pints, some card games and ridicule from the hardcore Welsh locals, who recommended we 'leave early in the morning with our tails between our legs', we finally escaped the pub 'lock in' and made the long 100meter trek back to the camp site in the thick snow.
The following morning we awoke to a complete white out with the snow in the Llanberis pass as deep as 7 inches in places and decided we would take the locals advice and retreat before anymore embarrassment.


Ridiculous amount of snow in the Llanberis Pass 

The small list of climbs I managed to tick:   First Stop F5
                                                               Septuagenarian F6a 
                                                               King Bee Crack HVS 5a
                                                               Tension VS 4b

Off to the Lake District on the 16th of this month on a walking eXpedition so hoping this shall make up for the poor trip we retreated from this week...