Tooling Comp

After 1 to many beers on Friday night, I woke up Saturday morning feeling crap! . Andy, Nathan, and me got ourselves signed on at the Ice Factor in Kinlochleven. We decided to start with the problem in the ice cube. As Nathan shows below, it was a interesting problem with the leap of faith!
We then got started on the other problems, which ranged from swinging logs, Campus board, and climbing up the out side of the building. One of the problems (11) you had to move out from a roof and into a tin opener hold, then a figure four over one axe, at that point one of my axes popped and smashed into my nose. Much to the amusement of Andy and Nathan who had taken a photo of the moment. After mopping up the blood and putting on some steri strips, I was back in action.
At 3pm we handed in our score sheets and the results were announced. I had made it through to the final of the vets. All the finalist had to go into isolation, which I was pretty uncomfortable with.
After the 4th clip I matched on one of my axes on a tin opener hold, but dropped the other axe in the process. Doh....

Steve joined us on Saturday night, then on Sunday we ended up at the Ice-Factor again for some more punishing dry tooling.





Nathan on Leap of Faith

Horrible Mantle


Andy cruising


Andy on one of the log problems


Me up the wall


My second attempt on this problem


Nathan on route 11


Andy climbing some rubble


Me in the Final


Dave McLeod doing what he does best

Coire An T-Sneachda 6th Dec

Back to Aviemore again on Friday Night, with John, Scott and Steve.
After a night at the Aviemore Bunkhouse, we headed for the Northern Corries, but our Journey was halted with the gate been closed on the Ski road. After nearly 2hrs the gritters had salted the road, and the gate was finally opened.
My original plan was to head over to Coire An Lochain, but with our earlier delays we followed the hoards of people into Sneachda.
Scott and John had a good time on Fingers Ridge IV,4
Me and Steve went and did Seam-stress IV,6. Steve's very first mixed route. Excellent route, and worth more than it's 2 * If the Seam is worth 3* then this is to.

Tooling Comp next Saturday, and hopefully a route on Sunday.

Tooling Comp and Sneachda

I entered the Dry Tooling comp in Aviemore on Saturday, with Nathan and Andy. We ran out of time and didn't manage all the set problems but I scraped into the finals. I'd need to train harder to conquer the roof sections, but enjoyed it. I'll be back for the final round in two weeks time at the Ice Factor.

Our plan for Sunday was Coire An Lochain, but on the walk in we could see it was very black. We decided to check out Coire An T-Sneachda which wasn't looking much better.
Fiacaill Buttress was looking like our best choice, so me and Nathan did The Seam IV,5

Great wee Route.

CMD Arete

On Saturday I decided to do some hill fitness, with a traverse of the CMD Arete.
Starting from the North Face car park I headed along the Allt A'Mhullin, before picking up a faint trail which heads up to Carn Beag Dearg. After traversing CMD, I down climbed the left of Bob Run, and headed for the much extended CIC hut.
Hope to get some mixed climbing in next w/e.

Ben Nevis 16th April

Had a good day with John and Scott on Hadrian's Direct. A long day out but well worth the effort. Watching John deal with the hot aches after the first pitch was probably the highlight of the day, after lots of moans, screams, swearing and calling out for his Mam! he then decided to be sick on the very small stance I had kicked out for me and Scott, dirty bastard!

Weather has crapped out for now. See what the start of May has to bring.

Helvellyn 24th March

Did 3 routes on Red Tarn today. V Corner, Wall and Ramp then finished off with Gully 1. All in good condition, V Corner only deserves a II today due to the banked out ice and neve. I counted at least 10 teams out today.

Ben Nevis 19th March

The weather on the Ben this morning was stunning, no wind, blue sky, and it was baltic.
Nathan had forgot to pack a rope, so with only one we decided Thompson's route was a good option. The approach up to No3 buttress is pretty easy with the amount of snow and neve.
But on our way back down Nathan got more than he bargained for, loosing control with a bum slide down No4, he must have covered over 200m in about 3 seconds till he bailed out...
Great day out.