I am a beginner at this game and found this climb (Crollo di un Mito * III, Cogne, Italy) steep enough.  But conditions were good and I became slightly more proficient as the week went on, even leading a couple of pitches.  I wore my skiing goggles all week – falling bits of ice are a recreational hazard.

Here are two more photos taken on the superb ice climb – Cascade de Lillaz Grade 3 .  An early start meant we were first on the route, it’s a popular climb.  Park in the centre of the village of Lillaz and it’s a ten minute walk upriver to the first 100m pitch which we soloed.  To reach the next pitch we skirted round the edge of a frozen pond as water was visible through the ice.  On the second pitch you can choose where to climb as some parts are steeper than others.  Then there is a few hundred metres walk to a corner pitch (that’s me leading it in the bottom photo) – really enjoyable with places to stand for putting in ice screws.  On the final pitch (middle photo) David took a steep line and I struggled to find a foothold in the icicles.  The climb finishes with an easy 50m traverse to a footpath in the sun!  A gentle downhill stroll takes you back to the village.  A deservedly 3-star Italian classic.

Well, just a quick report and a few pix from a very pleasant Christmas week spent in the French Alps. Not a lot of ice formed (due to the unseasonably warm November) but enough for a bit of fun. And, LOADS of snow… so lots of opportunities for XC skiing, falling over and getting back up again. When it all started hurting too much, the gentle pursuit of snow-shoeing was enjoyed – except by those who moaned it was just a glorified form of walking. You’re right, it is just a glorified form of walking but it does stop you getting buried up to your neck in powder snow. Highlights include: the President’s return to the Ecrins Alps 16 years after her first appearance on the Alpine scene as a young debutant (you really need to ask her about that trip…), mass falling-overs on our bad weather day and the fantastically furry dog sledding team.

So now thoughts turn to 2012 and all those exciting opportunities to terrify yourself in your chosen medium.

‘May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face.

May the next hold always be just within reach.

May you live long to retell all your climbing tales with a pint in your hand.’

Happy New Year!
PS: Question. How can you tell when you’ve got a sports climbers on your winter trip? Answer. When she arrives at a foot of an ice route with a cherry tomato and tortilla wrap for her packing-up

Hartside Pass in winter

“Snow is falling, all around us, children playing, having fun…”. Oh no they’re not, they’re all in school and it’s my afternoon off so a quick trip up to Hartside Pass for the first cross country planking of the season. Lots of fresh snow on a nice base of deep wet bog made for entertaining going. Plus deep drifting (this is the Pennines) led to the opportunity to bury one’s skis in waist deep snow holes. A white-out developed as we skied back heading into the next rapidly encroaching Atlantic front, unsurprisingly no-one else out on the hill. Combined with a finish in the dark and one headtorch between us the afternoon made for a typically character building experience; I love winter! But hey, before you start to get envious, it’s raining now.

You may have surmised from all this that the Lake District was wet – again. Very wet. Trousers-falling-down-because-they-are-so-heavy-with-rain wet. Too wet for slugs! The only thing you can do when it is like that is get in the water straight away and keep laughing. This time we were scrambling up Tarn Crag Ghyll, heading up towards Stickle Tarn. We shuffle-hopped bronco-style across jammed trees, edged our way side-stepping above a ravine, plunged through waterfalls and swung from tree roots to emerge on the hillside into a side-swiping gale that had us crouching down at times to avoid getting blown back into the river on our way down the hill to the valley. We spotted a troop of helmeted, life-jacketed schoolchildren waving excitedly up at us from the stream-bed as we reached the bottom. Prospective Members in the making?

I am haunted by waters (well, I’m not really; I prefer warm, dry rock or frosty, sunny gritstone, but it’s a fine line to end a book, isn’t it?)

The start time was brought forward because of a poor weather forecast and by mid-morning a large party had amassed at the bottom of the route. Three different examples of hawser-laid technology were brought out and women in strange dress reacquainted themselves with the intricacies of tying a bow-line. Modern gear included a couple of ropes, a few slings and krabs but there were no helmets, harnesses or rockboots. It was either walking boots or trainers, the soles of brown brogues considered too smooth for safe passage.

I’d never previously climbed the route but I knew in my bones that Lockwood’s Chimney would be the direst of experiences for someone of my elegant slab sensibilities. With the certainty that the rain was a’coming I expected a few to drop out at this point but by heck – a forest of eager hands went up for the ascent. Maybe they didn’t realise at this point that while the chimney itself would stay reasonably dry, they would get utterly degged on after leaving it.

I was in a quandary. My absence would now be more obvious than I’d planned for so I was becoming concerned about being given the white feather. However, a dent in my personal reputation seemed as nothing compared to a pathetically bad climbing performance recorded for posterity. Once everyone was safely ensconced on the route in the perfectly-timed rain, I hot-footed it back to the hut under an out-of-period Decathlon brolly. In the company of the equally wise Official Photographer, I enjoyed hot coffee in the dry whilst others suffered.

As the whole soggy experience was visually recorded I was able to establish that the cream of the Pinnacle Club had huddled in the confines of Lockwood’s Chimney like French aristocrats before Madame Guillotine. Questions were asked of those who had gone before and the replies duly came. “Best to face left” (Experienced Climber One), “Best to face right” (Experienced Climber Two), “Chimneys are an individual thing …..” (Experienced Climber Three).

Fellow blogger, Deidre O’Caunagh (see left), stomped up and over a newish club member to surmount the crux chockstone in a fine display of combined tactics and disdain for the pain of others. Twelve more followed, all inadequately clad for the conditions, each demonstrating the fine arts of thrutching, sling-clutching, and scrabbling. Some of those pristine outfits were irrevocably damaged and bruises were sustained that would last for many, many days.

Am I sorry I missed it? Given my primary aim on this meet had always been to be theatrical (not battered and wet through) I have to regretfully regard my decision as a sound one.

Just what is the definition of ‘short’ in climbing terms? At a smidgin short of 5’4” (162cm) I think of myself as short-ish, as most of the women and all the men I climb with are taller than me. I shy from leading routes with ‘long’ or ‘reach’ in the description; if your average guidebook writer thinks you need to stretch a bit I am quite likely to find it necessitates the kind of telescopic manoeuvre where you can’t actually breathe anymore because your ribs are so extended. I do remember though, years ago, a 6’ friend asked how I was able to climb Billingsgate at Millstone Edge, as he found it reachy; my response was that I just climbed between the holds.

This is about a route where there is no ‘in-between’.

Trepidation, then, as ex-President orders me to do Kinky Boots at Baggy Point, one of those classic Devon routes everyone should do, but no-one could ever assure me I would be able to do (and it’s not the grade I’m talking about). You know the one: “fall across the zawn…”. My beta is that instead of falling with both hands you can reach with one hand, follow with one foot and the second hand, then ‘just step over’; except for me the holds I can reach are not the large, chalk-covered ones, but some about 8 inches lower and to the right and rather less useful; and once one toe is (just) touching the opposite side my balance is quite wrong for ‘stepping over’. It’s going to have to be a definite upward pull using side-holds at full-stretch – all over that sea-churned gap.

After several teetering retreats, either succumbing to the nerves or needing to relax the overstretched groin, I eventually fling caution to the winds and launch myself across. Surprised to find I do, in fact, stick to the rock the rest of the pitch follows enjoyably. However the next problem is finding someone to second the pitch. The first contender is only 5’1” (155cm) and, despite having the annoying habit of out-bouldering me on moves I say I can’t reach, is literally doing the splits when her foot is across and can’t move to reach anything to pull across on. In fact, the only way she gets back is courtesy of a heave on a back-rope. Eventually conceding defeat the rope is passed on to contender no. 2, towering above her at a lanky 5’3” (160cm). Those 2 inches prove decisive, as she can just get her hands on the same holds as me, makes the move and the route is in the bag.

So there you have it, the minimum height for Kinky Boots is empirically tested by the Pinnacle Club as 5’3” and aspirants of 5’1” needn’t bother tying on the rope. (Sorry, no.1)

iron work!

by Deidre O’Caunagh

Thanks to power of the Internet it is now possible to know that it is pouring with rain in the French Alps just when you plan to go on holiday there. So, it was a quick change of plans for the Doctor and I and we drove straight through France until it stopped raining, somewhere just south of Grenoble. Orpiere was the nearest place to climb so we holed up there for a couple of days with hordes of Dutch and Germans washed out from higher mountains. Well, it was far too busy with pasty northern Europeans littering the crags so instead we got out our via ferrata kit and aided by some very helpful leaflets from the tourist office explored some routes in the Buech area.
Fact! Via ferratas are FUN! If you’ve never been think extreme scrambling but so much safer because you’re clipped into a lovely big wire cable. Of course the French haul the whole of their family up them in large jolly parties although that’s not to say it is possible to kill yourself on them. So do read the instructions on your fancy shock-absorbing lanyards.
Our first attempt at a suitably easy route in the delightful Gorge d’Agnielles left us ashen-faced at the thought of small children romping across the vertiginous drops. In our defence though, it was wet. Probably why there was no-one else on it at the time.
Most of the routes we did were easily accessed (ie: road-side) so are ideal for all you sports climbers who don’t want to build your legs up, but there are also some stunning longer routes with plenty of atmosphere to satisfy any closet mountaineers. They’re graded as for alpine routes from F through to ED. We did a couple of TD’s and thought they were brilliant; at this grade hard enough to make you nervous before you started and with lots of technical challenge to keep your nerves jangling the higher you got up the route. Great stuff!
The French seem to have been very busy re-equipping existing classic routes as well as putting up entirely new ones. One or two of the most high tech routes charge but for your five euros you get features like a 300 metre zip wire – there’s something to make you scream. Just make sure you hire the correct sort of pulley…. don’t even think that, being British, you’ll be alright with some bit of ancient hardware you dug out the bottom of your sac that you once used for glacier rescue. But who needs to pay when, for free, you can terrify yourself on overhanging pillars, traverse across unthinkingly huge chasms, recreate those Himalayan moments on pont nepalaise (think Steal Falls wire bridge) and teeter across rickety planks with nowt to hold onto.
So, if you’re bored of bolts and the mountains are too wet have some fab fun getting fit on via ferratas. There is an English guidebook to all the French via ferrata available in the UK but it is now dated and you can get a new version in France (in French, surprisingly!). Go on, you know it makes sense.

Pont Nepalaise

Falling between the two stools of wanting to be early enough to miss the queue but late enough to be in the sunshine, we heaped the ropes at the bottom whilst waiting for the route to clear of its incumbents. Our early lunch upset the coolly-dressed-in-black Scouse climber twiddling his thumbs on the stance of the first pitch – he’d unwisely not broken into his sandwich stash before setting off.

There remained only the final dither about clothing and we were off up Outside Edge, the classic V Diff on the Great Slab that provides not only good mountain and sea panoramas but a view of Caernarfon Castle. After a straightforward first pitch, the climbing proper starts with an airy rising traverse across a steep wall endowed with good holds if not a lot of gear. Another straightforward pitch and then pitch 4 – a delicate traverse across some ribs (never entirely sure if I was going across on the right level) before reaching what is probably the crux pitch up a wide corner crack. I decided to sally up the wall to the right before returning to the crack when it closed to a more amenable width i.e. no danger of inserting any body part into its confines. The route finally departs the crack for the arête by some neat moves and there I was – in one of the most exceptionally fine mountain positions in North Wales. The teardrop twin lakes far below looked darkly beautiful against the brightness and a finishing scramble in warm sun was made to join our friends who had been climbing ahead of us.  I was now ridiculously overdressed and I shed layers of clothing before coiling the ropes and changing into trainers. The descent (The Great Stone Shoot) is not for repeating too many times in one day and it was certainly worth the trainers bouncing around my backside on the way up.

OK, we had waited at the bottom for quite a while to avoid a frustrating staccato ascent but where did the day go?

The photographer retreated to the warmth of the hut to ‘Photoshop’ the rock into the pictures, at which point we noticed the Cromlech baking in the sunshine opposite us. Ripping off carpets of thick green moss and wiping dry the crucial foothold with a beer mat (a rare commodity these days), we teetered our way up the final, tricky pitch to welcome sunshine and bilberries at the top of the crag. A fine expedition, but we doubted we should ever come back.

The rest of the weekend couldn’t have been in greater contrast: a bright and breezy ascent of Outside Edge at Cwm Silyn on the Saturday and Left Wall in a heatwave on the Sunday. From our perch at the top of the Cromlech we looked across and saw… surprise, surprise… a team on The Mole. Perhaps, for them, we had made all the difference.

We find ourselves halfway up Lorton Gully and faced with a wall of green slime. The E2 Leader in our party is volunteered to ‘pop up it’ first, but traditional tactics are required. So A. bridges across the gully to simultaneously provide a foothold and ‘block’ E2L’s fall (see photo 1). But A. starts to slide downwards, so Our Glorious Leader uses her shoulder to wedge her in place (rugby prop-forward style – see photo 2 for precise positioning). The rest of us are standing on the ledge behind watching apprehensively, with good reason – a) it’s our turn next and b) we’re trying to block out images of dominoes and skittles. Finally Our Glorious Leader takes the lead and bridges/udges up, with double blocking from E2L and A. below. “What a hoot!” she exclaims as she heaves onto the ledge above. Not quite the expletive I’d have used in her position.

Footnote: Once safely over this crux, A. points out a slug on E2 leader’s finger: “Oh I thought my finger felt heavier than usual” was a pretty cool response.