A wild one!

There's nothing like an impending assessment to get one out when everyone else is tucked up at home!

I headed up into Brown Cove Crags today, the plan being to solo some gullies and see where the day took me.  50mph winds and a blizzard, with pretty much no visibility, put pay to that!

Brown Cove Crags in a blizzard

There is ice and old neve in the gullies, but it's lean and the guidebook grades probably don't apply.

There were a couple of keen beans heading up Central Gully which was in very lean conditions.

So i headed into the craziness and spent a good few hours navigating by compass, timing and pacing alone, coupled to that winds of 70mph, made it was a brilliant day!

The snow was being shifted around at a fair old rate, and any banks quickly had drifts behind them.  (Not in front of them as I always thought!)  Finding a reasonably deep one, I set to and dug myself a quick, little snowhole to get out of the elements.  I ended up getting my body out, but not my legs, I am 6ft 2".

Improvised shelter 'Lake Distict Stylee'

 ie: i reached grass before i could dig a good shelter!

Fisherplace Gill on the way down

It has been cold...these are rimed up blades of grass!!

And a rimed up tree.

Once again the Lakes has shown me that with enough motivation to get out, the worst days can be the best.

Ben Arthur ‘The Cobbler’

Had a brilliant day to day on the Cobbler in the Trossachs.  It’s one of the more Southerly bigger hills in Scotland and I’d kind of disregarded it for years, but i was shown the error of my ways to day and saw just why it’s called the Arrocher Alps.

We had a great time practicing snow belays, checking for avalanche risk, climbing up and down steep slopes and generally messing around and honing those skills.

Ski Touring on Skiddaw in the Lake District

It absolutely dumped with snow here in the lakes last night, so we had to struggle out an get some skiing in.  The snow was to a low level, but with temperatures rising had gotten very heavy.

We managed to park on the Latrigg road and skinned from there up to the road and up to Little Man.

The snow was at first heavy and deep and then cold but hard to soft windslab which at times made turns pretty tricky (well for me!)

Heading up Slat gill and then down to the Lonscale traverse was a stroke of genius as all was skiable with care and enthusiasm.

 

Top day, not sure it’s gonna last though with temperatures rising.  Still you never know….

Winter Climbing in the Lakes

 

We’ve had snow and cold conditions for a while now, but only a little snow which is still sitting around as powder and for some reason, ice hasn’t seemed to be rapidly forming.  With that in mind we went off for a little explore in the North Lakes and hit the jackpot!  There is ice out there, you just gotta look around a bit.

Happy Hunting!

Mark and Ali

Ski Touring in the Lakes

It’s taken me a little while to write this up, but me and Stu had a proper mountain day ski touring in the Lakes last week.
There was really good snow cover, a bit hard, due to freezing conditions, but great fun non-the less.  The best and definitely funniest bit was skiing and navigating in a complete whiteout.  At one point i skied headfirst into a big bank of snow I just didn’t know was there.

Skiing up onto Stybarrow Dodd…we could still see at this point!

Looking West towards Keswick.

The Back (north) face of Stybarrow Dodd.  It was ICY!!

Stu looking very relaxed as always.

River crossing on skies…how did it all end?!

It’s gotten warm and wet since, but it’ll be back for sure and we’ll keep posting when it does.
Cheers
Mark

Caving in Marilyns Pot

Had a brilliant day today with my mate exploring down Marilyns Pot which joins Disappointment Pot (it’s rather nice actually!) then on down into the Gaping Ghyll system…which is huge!

We managed to fight, wriggle, squirm and swear our way along the very muddy and low and long New Hensler Passage at the bottom of the SRT which takes you eventually to the bottom of Bar Pot, etc.

Unfortunately as we had taken a few wrong turns along the way and were on a dead-line we had to turn around here and go back through the MUD. Argh! so much MUD! 

So no Chamber of the Winds for me today, but a great adventure and a better understanding of the cave gained. And I’ll be back.

Cheers for now

Mark