Vallee Blanche - Twice in a day

"Dude, we have to stop, I've lost the tracks and I can't see where the crevasses are." The weather had taken over us, no matter how hard or fast we skied. It was now snowing and combined with the wind and low cloud, we had lost the tracks. Up ahead, the buried tracks passed over a snow bridge, open crevasses either side. Without the tracks or visability, we had no idea which crevasse would swallow us up. Too scared to carry on, we waited, forced to spend the night on the glacier. Just the 2 of us, alone in bad weather, on the Vallee Blanche...

Chamonix Skiing

Lady skier (on piste): THERE'S A CREVASSE BELOW YOU!!

Me (off piste): Yeah, I know, cheers!

Me: "shit.....Kev! Have you noticed the Bergschrund? We're above it."

Kev: "Shit...I have now, Back up! Onto the piste!

We'll pick up from here later......

Kaprun & Zell Am See, Austria skiing

During December of 2013, I learnt how to ski at the Mendip dry ski slope near Bristol. I had a ski holiday booked to Kaprun in Austria in January and another trip to Chamonix in the pipeline for March. However,  my first encouter with skis didn't go to well...

Ansteys Cove 7c+ !!

Now I'm excited and psyched!! A pretty normal sport climbing day out resulted in me coming home super psyched and happy! here's what happened...

Wintours LEAP

My second attempt at Wintours. Harness packed the night before! Me, Chris and Dave now heading towards a vertical world of fun and adventure. First up, Surrealist (E1 5b)

Wet Cheddar Aid practice

Just a quick post. Me and Chris were intending to head to Cheddar for a few sport routes. However, the weather was against us and the crags were piss wet! So instead, we came to the conclusion that we need to develop some Aid climbing techniques. Armed with a full rack of trad gear, a single sky hook, etires made from quickdraws and slings and a nut key, we started up a 6b sport route.

We managed to aid to the first bolt, and then the wall went blank. No micro wire could be placed as the crack was too small. Deploy the sky hook! it worked, but now we need another... what have we got that is sky hook shaped in our rack?

Answer: A nut key! And amazingly, it worked better than the sky hook, as the sky hook ripped but the nut key held! But that too still wasn't enough to stop chris taking a rather impressive fall when a piece of gear he weighted ripped.

So here's to learning how to aid climb properly, with proper aid gear...

Rocking the Haytor Lobster

After my last fail forgetting my harness, I was determined to set things right! And so, I set off to Haytor on Dartmoor with Dave and Chris and met up with Pablo at the car park.