15 Peaks

Day 1

Snow in May what ever next.

I'm out with Carl & Dave doing the 15 Peaks over 3 days.

3 Peaks Challenge

We've just run our first 3 peaks of the season had the best weather you could wish for.

Once we had loaded up our supplies we headed off from Snowdonia for the long drive to Fort William stopping off in Glen Coe to enjoy the stunning Scottish Highlands and dinner. With an early 05.00am start on Ben Nevis we made the long climb up the highest mountain in the U.K. The last 200mts of the climb was snow covered and with clear blue skies the views over the highlands was breath taking.

Once on the Summit we had an extra reward as Glenfiddich Whiskey were giving out free samples along with a bagpipe player which was awesome.

After a short break on the summit it was time to return to Glen Nevis jump on our bus and head for Scafell in the Lake District.
We would be climbing Scafell in the dark, were navigation can be tough at times.

We made good time up Scafell, No Whiskey this time just a cold northerly wind to greet us, So a quick photo shoot and down once again to our bus.
Once on the bus everyone was flat out asleep in no time, I must admit our little mobile home was beginning for smell a little fresh.

We arrived at Snowdon at first light feeling pretty tired with very little sleep and aching bones we sorted our kit and started are final summit.

Some of the team wer e in poor shape due to bad knees and had to miss out the final summit.

It was a little strange to be without our full team on our final climb.

We made Snowdon summit in good time and our total time for the 3 peaks was 28.5hrs.

After a celebration hot chocolate on the summit we slowly made our way down the Miners track enjoying the heat of the sun and stunning views of the Snowdon Masiff.

We meet up with the rest of team back at the Vagabond Hostel, then after a hot shower went out for a little celebration drink.

It was incredible weekend and everyone pushed themselves to the limit.

We had the most amazing conditions and it was a great pleasure to do such a tough challenge with such a determined group of people.

15 Peaks (knees up)

May Bank Holiday was our first 15 peaks of the season and thankfully we had fairly good weather through out the odd hail storm but generally clear skies and great views.

Day 1 - We started our challenge from the Northern end of the Carneddau after a 2hr climb we reached the summit of our first Welsh 3000'er. Not bad timing as I think there were a few hangovers in the team.
We had a mixed day of sunshine & hail a bit strange in May really, but we also had some great views over Snowdonia and could even see the Irish coast line at times.

Sue & Steve were really struggling by the end of the day with bad knees so much so it took us about 2.5hrs to descend from our final Peak of the day, Sue was being a complete legend as it was pretty clear she was in a great deal of pain but battled on down with out any fuss.

Day 2 - S tarts off straight up the North Ridge of Tryfan and awesome Grade 1 Scramble and our training ground for Crib Coch on the final day. No hangovers today just very sore legs.We made great time to the summit enjoying some challenging scrambling onroute. Our next summit awaited as we made our way up the loose scree to Glyder Fach then onto Glyder Fawr.

At this point our other Sue had run out of steam, we had a regroup discussed a plan of action, Myself & Dave assisted Sue off the mountain as she was totally exhausted, Bryn & Emma then continued on to finish all the remaining summits for the day not to be beat by this tough challenge.

Bryn & Emma finally finished at 20.30 we headed straight for a beer and some dinner, Pie & Chips all round.

Day 3 - Our Final day and we were now down to 3 of us to finish off the route.

We awoke early morning, all very excited as today we were doing the Snowdon Horseshoe an awesome high level route around the Snowdon Massif, only to look out the window to see Snowdon totally white, I couldn't believe my eyes snow in May.
After a team meeting we decided we would start the route as assess the conditions as the day went. We also had another injury as Emma's knee was in pretty bad shape. You would never believe you could have so many bad knees in one group.

Any how we decided to give it our best shot as the mountains were looking like they just had to be climbed with a fresh covering of snow and now blue skies.

Unfortunately Emma's knee was giving her so much pain we had to retreat and call it a day.

We made a plan to return and complete the Snowdon Horseshoe later in the year when everyone's knees were in working order.
It's was a great weekend, i'm already looking forward to catching up having a beer and finish off what we started.

I've now got 3 days to recharge the batteries before the 3 Peaks this weekend.

I hope everyone has good knees.

Spring Time

Were enjoying this fine weather up in Snowdonia at the moment.
Snowdonia Nat Pk is so dry it's unbelievable and there's still pockets of snow on the tops which makes the Park looks stunning.



We have been busy running navigation courses over the last few weeks.
All the course's have varied from the NNAS Award Scheme to Mountain Leader Refresher Course's and Night Navigation.

Next weekend is the first of our Welsh 15 Peaks of the season and the forecast is looking good.

Everyone on the May Toubkal Climb have been trying to squeeze in some training and reports from Jamal our man in Morocco is that all the snow has now cleared and it's warming up nicely, which is great news as were camping.



See you on the hill

Jim

Welsh Ridge Walks

Spring is finally here and we've also had some great sunny days.

It's been a fab winter, but were happy to see spring finally arrive.

Our first weekend this spring was spent doing some of the lesser known walks in Snowdonia, but just as stunning as the popular walks, the bonus being it's very quiet and free from all the more popular routes.

On Saturday we headed out for the Nantlle Ridge, with stunning views of Snowdon and the coastline plus some easy scrambling the Nantlle Ridge is a must for all those looking for something new away from the crowds.

Once we had got over the initial shock of a very long steep climb onto the ridge and were rewarded with magnificent 360 views.

On the ridge the route starts on a broad ridge then narrows into a smaller brother of Crib Coch the great thing about Nantlle is you can take the more challenging route or the more relaxed route.

Sunday we climbed Cnitch known as the Matterhorn of Wales this is one of those quiet parts of the National Park that when your there you think why have I not been here before it's simply stunning again great views of Snowdon, Cadir Idris and the Coast.

There's a short scramble to the summit which just adds the whole experience once on the summit it was lunch time before following a short wide ridge then finally descending to our start point.

Both these routes get very little visitors which make it's such a special place.

Remember mum's the word.

Scottish Winter Skills

We Loaded up our Land Rover for what was going to be a slow trip to the Scottish Highlands.
The joy of driving a land rover, well we would be going slow enough to enjoy the stunning Scottish Highlands but get a very numb backside in the process.

Arriving in Aviemore and the sun was shining, Wow this is going to be a good week. Of course it was't to last about an hour in fact.

So our winter skills started off ice axe arrest then moving onto snow pack asessment and winter navigation skills and finally crossing step ground.

After 3 days practising all our new skills in strong winds and zero visability we headed out on our expedition.

Once on the Cairn Gorm plateau we were down to zero visability so good navigation was need to find a venue for our night in a snow hole.

After 3 hours digging we finally had our cosy little home and a brew on.

Everyone had a good night's sleep if not a little damp.

The folowing day we spent practising our navigation before covering some steep ground decending Fiacaill Ridge and finally a controlled bum slide into Corrie Sneachda.

After a hot shower we headed out for a curry and well earn't beer..

Everyone then headed home the following day.

I stayed on a few days to make the most of the last few weeks of winter conditions, another day on the Cairn Gorm and then climbed gulley number 4 on Ben Nevis in glourious sunshine before heading back to Wales justv in time for more snow.

What an amazing winter this has been, lets hope we continue to have more winter like this year.

Rjukan Ice Climbing

We arrived in Norway with a bang that was our landing the runway was a sheet ice pretty scary.

Outside the airport it was blowing a gale and about -12 the adventure had begun.
Our first 5 days in Rjukan were really cold average daily temp -16 so it made the ice really brittle so it was coming away in huge pieces. One of our group ended up with a split eye and great black eye.

We headed for the lower gorge for the first 2 days then we checked out Ozizmosis these were great intro's into the area and ice climbing.
Norway is'nt cheap and £5 a pint at happy hour we only had a couple of beers before maxing out the credit cards.
With such cold conditions and huge amounts of snow our next planned adventure to MAEL was going to be full on.
MAEL is a true adventure with an absail into the gorge then a 4 pitch WI 3 cllimb out for the hard core there a WI 4 & WI 6.
After a long full days climb everyone was rewarded with 5ft of snow towade through a tough but awsome day.
It was time for a rest day for me but the remianing of the group climbed every day.

Rjukan is a world class ice climbing area with over 150 water falls to climb with climbing routes to suit every level.
We headed out for the Krokan area once everyone was feeling strong this area had some of more technical climbing in the area there were some pretty knarly ice colums to be climbed for those good enough of mad enough.
We spent a couple days in the upper gorge there was some full on multi- pitch routes to be climbed including the world class Lipton good knows how people manage to climb it.
After 10 days we were all well and truly wasted everyyone climbed really hard but we all left Norway very happy and planning next years rtn trip.