Winter 25/26: The curse of the weekend warrior

Post expedition blues 

On coming back from Peru I wanted to make the most of my freedom. I went to north wales for a week with Bri and enjoyed a lot of roadside cragging. Afterwards I went to Lost Village to engage in some mindless hedonism which was a welcome change to the hard but satisfying work of climbing. As an aside, high altitude mountaineering is great training for festivals - no sleep, little food, all day on your legs - maybe it goes the other way too! However the come down made me realise I was well and truly spent. I went home and spent the next three weeks immobile from my couch. Afterwards, I settled into work nicely and was able to start indoor climbing consistently for the first time ever, as well as getting regular weekend trips to the Peak District. I tried to lead my first HVS, Great North Road, but couldn’t commit to first crux. I tried to lead my second HVS, Meringue, but couldn’t commit to the first crux. 

Looking towards Llanberis from the top of the ‘The Cracks’ on Dina’s Mot. 

A lovely day walking whilst carrying all our climbing gear. Went to kinder north and tried to climb but it was cold, damp, and dark. So walked to kinder south, did two climbs and then got benighted. 

Early Season Antics

For me, the winter of 25/26 started with another visit to Bri in early December. The forecast was only showing conditions holding for the first day of the long weekend and, with the weather looking less than favorable in the afternoon, we decided to do the relatively short Ventilator (III) in Lochain to get in and out quickly. The approach was a good reintroduction to Scottish weather with it raining all the way to base of the crag. This facilitated a lot of stops to discuss if it worth continuing, as well as letting the hot aches subside. Once on the climb it went smoothly, the climb gave 3 full value pitches with both holds and gear requiring a lot of digging. Luckily the climb was sheltered because the high winds that were forecasted came earlier and a lot stronger than predicted. It was the sort of winds that felt like you’re being slapped from all directions before being shoved onto the ground. And if you try and crawl away the wind would pick you up and throw you sideways. Visibility was practically nil and not wanting to be thrown off the edge, we moved into the plateau and used the rime to navigate ourselves to the descent ridge. The bearing from the 1141 cairn had seemingly ingrained itself in me from my experience after Wavelength so there was no need to bring the compass out this time. The highest recorded gust whilst we were on the plateau was 89mph. It took us 13 hours car to car with only 4 of those being climbing, embarrassingly the approach was 5 of those hours. 

A surprisingly ‘in’ Lochain considering how wet the walk in was. 
C. Briony Pickford

A few days later we went for a walk up Geal Charn but had clearly picked up some sort of PTSD because at the slightest hint of wind higher than expected we retreated to the safety of the van.

Lake District Ice and High Psych

“Joining the queue on Blea would be my personal idea of hell” - a guy on Facebook

The new year brought a cold weather system to the UK but for the first two weeks I was kept away, first in London and then at work watching the amazing conditions in North Wales and the Lakes slip by. By the second weekend the psych was so high that a plan was hatched: Thursday after work Andrew and I would meet to climb the kinder downfall, followed by Miranda joining us to climb in the Lakes over the weekend. Unfortunately Storm Goretti put a stop to the downfall as it was questionable whether I would even be able to make it there and in hindsight, having seen pictures, it wasn’t even formally formed. An Atlantic weather system brought rain to the Lakes on Sunday but, thankfully, we were able to have an amazing Saturday on Blea Water. 

Setting of from the car park at around 7:30am with a stream of people already ahead of us, we knew that there would be a lot of queuing. Not helping was that we accidentally took the scenic tour via Small Water. Finally getting to the right crag, we saw there was a smaller queue up the Icefall variation so headed to that. 

Clear(ish) skies in the Lake District! 

Miranda and I now walking next to the correct lake. 
C. Andrew Bonner 

Andrew was psyched to lead the crux second pitch and Miranda was still waking up, giving me the first pitch. I was pretty nervous stepping up onto the initial pillar and would have done quite well in an Elvis impersonation contest. Once I managed to convince myself to go for it, I got remarkably calm on the steep pillar. As with many things, the thought of it was worse then doing it; nowhere near as pumpy, and I felt far more secure then I thought I was going to be. I felt calm and comfortable for the rest of the pitch, enjoying every aspect of it. From there Andrew led through and Miranda’s pitch quickly followed. 

A classic scene: I’m scared, Miranda’s wearing a citadel, and Andrew is making sure his shiny new gear is in shot. 
C. Andrew Bonner 

Andrew nearing the top of the first pitch. I definitely didn’t get him to pose. 

Miranda making it look more enjoyable. 

Andrew leading p2. 

We had somehow managed to avoid the queues on Blea Water Gill Icefall (the group ahead was faster, the group behind was slower) so whilst belaying Miranda, Andrew and I had realised we should have told her to belay somewhere where we could traverse over to Blea Water Gill. As I popped my head around the corner and prepared to tell her, she shouted down ‘Hey we should go climb that next’. Great minds. So a quick traverse got us to the start of pitch 2 of Blea Water Gill and joining the circus of people going up and down it. Luckily it was wide enough that we never had to wait for long, although there were occasionally 3 or 4 people climbing next to each other. I managed to get the crux pitch, the only sustained steep section of the day and was again nervous approaching it but as soon as the first axe sunk into the ice the nerves flowed away. At one point in the pitch I even hung around on the steep section to practise having to place a screw one handed. 

All in all a fabulous 9 pitch day where we each managed to lead two proper pitches of climbing. 

Miranda following the crux pitch after the worst of the queue cleared. 

Me following Miranda up some more steep sections. 
C. Andrew Bonner 

One day we’ll go out and not have an epic 

Work sent me to Glasgow by mid January, so the regular weekend expeditions were able to begin. The first was when Bri and I attempted to climb The Seam (IV 5) in tough conditions. It’s either very hard for the grade or I was supremely out of practise (probably the latter) because 2 hours into the second pitch I was doing a lot of squirming and getting nowhere. So I retreated of a hex and then we abseiled down of some tat. 

Bri getting ready to sort out the inevitable tangles. 

The next couple weekends were spent practising how to carry a rack and ropes up a hill and generally heading to the part of Scotland with the worst weather. 

Becoming a top rope hero in the Dolomites

Towards the end of February I went on an AC meet to Val di Fassa in the dolomites to try out some proper European winter stuff. 

My partner for the trip was (and I swear I’m not making this up) Alex. We headed to Cofolsco on the first day where a guidebook reading error sent us onto La Spade de Damocles WI 4. We both started up the crux second pitch but we either wanted to practise our downclimbing skills or got intimidated (you choose) so headed down. We went next door and I led the first pitch of Solo per Pochi that went at WI 3 before heading down to the car park.

Downclimbing the crux pitch Spada di Damocle. At least I got a lot of practise placing screws. 
C. Alex Barnes 

Coming down from La Spada di Damocle. 
C. Alex Barnes 

Alex following the first pitch of Solo por Pochi. 

The second day Alex and I teamed up with Ula and Julia to climb the right hand variation of Cascata di Fontanazzo WI 3+ as two pairs. A beautiful day out rambling up a very atmospheric gully, Alex led the crux pitch with panache and I managed to get two WI 3 pitches with the only scary moment occurring when I had to cross a thin ice bridge over a flowing torrent. Despite the late 10:00 start, due to Italian buses, we were down in the valley by 3:30 and treated ourselves to some sweet treats from the local bakery. 

Julia leading the final pitch next to me. 

Team selfie at the top. Where’s Julian?
C. Julia

Here’s Julian! Having chosen a very poor and wet belay spot. 
C. Ula

Alex on the first proper pitch of the climb. We were very confused by the guidebook description of ‘spit’ pool and thought it was a translation error until we got here. 

By Tuesday the Sottoguda gorge had been cleared of avalanche danger so we went there with Mark and Steve. Unfortunately the climbing Mecca of the dolomites wasn’t in great shape and there were only two pitches that Alex and I felt confident in leading. After Alex led the first pitch of Cascata della Attraversate (WI 3), Steve very kindly led us up the rest of the climb at WI 4+ and WI 4 as a team of 4. It was great being able to follow someone up something steeper but I felt like I learnt the most watching an Italian mountain rescue selection group move about on the climb as if it were flat ground. Watching them move on that terrain taught me more technique and skill then I could’ve ever learnt on my own. I also had to completely redefine my definition of efficiency; in the time it took us to do one pitch: one of them had set up a new route by aiding up a blank section, drilling 3 bolts, lowering, and then climbed it clean including an overhanging icicle above. And it got repeated, twice! 

Steve belaying me up the last bit of the climb.
C. Mark Weeding   

Alex entering the gorge. 

If you squint your eyes it looks like I’m leading.
C. Alex Barnes  

A better view of the second pitch. Italian mega wad just about seen on the dagger to my right. 
C. Alex Barnes

Alex was keen for a couple days of skiing so I was left to do some networking over dinner. I talked to Stephen who, with a very relaxed smile, said to join him at 6am to have a wonder into a valley and see if there’s something we could do. The next morning I piled into the car with him and Efes, following Aykut and Dai to the Vallunga valley. The supposedly short walk in started, and then continued, and continued, and never quite seemed to stop. After following a well groomed path for about an hour, we turned right and started bushwacking up some pine trees for another hour and half. This deposited us on to the snow slopes below the climb which was a horrible waist deep swim up loose powder which was helped by acting as a peloton taking turns breaking trail, changeovers normally enacted by the leader falling over backwards. It was also slightly terrifying due to the persistent weak layer about a foot deep. 3 hours after leaving the car we were at the base of our route: Jumbo Jet WI 5.

Efes led Aykut and Stephen up the first WI 4 pitch and then Dai led closely behind to bring me up. We walked an exposed traverse to the base of the pillar to join the others where Aykut was making steady progress on it. The walk in had taken its toll on Stephen, leaving the rest of us to climb it as a team of 4. However Aykut was in a bit of a rush having a 4 hour drive back home afterwards, and I knew that I would increase the time significantly both because of the faff climbing as a 4 and also because I would probably fall a lot, so chose to stay on the ground. Whilst the others climbed it, I did some ice bouldering at the base of the pillar whilst Stephen gave me pointers on my technique and taught me how to do abolakov threads. The walk back was only slightly less torturous. 

One last little bit of postholing before getting to the track. 

Walking back out through the forest. 

Dai climbing the first pitch. 

By Thursday almost everyone was keen for a skiing day, leaving Will, Patrick, and myself to get up to some shenanigans. We wondered up the Gares valley where Will put in a great lead on the monster 55m WI 5 first pitch of Tre per Tre that started at vertical and only got steeper. I somehow managed to second this clean whilst Patrick stayed on the ground as he didn’t like the look of some hanging icicles. However, keen to climb something he started up The End WI 3+, only to encounter a very thin and delaminated section about 10m up with lots of water running behind it. What followed was a tenuous, pants filling down climb over hollow sounding ice but he got down to the ground with an almost audible release of tension. With the sun now hitting the top of the valley a lot of the surrounding ice falls started to shed some fragments and so, with our sketchiness meters full, we made our escape down to a lovely refuge that had great cake. 

Pulling over the final bulge. 
C. Will Green

Shaking out the pump. 
C. Patrick Hogan

A better view of the climb whilst I demonstrate poor technique. The belay is hidden at the top but still in frame, there was a cool looking second pitch up a freestanding pillar that unfortunately wasn’t in. 
C. Patrick Hogan

Feeling the need to put the ‘alpine’ in alpine club, Patrick and I arranged to climb Hypercoldai (TD) on the last climbing day of the meet. The 3:30 alarm was rather painful to wake up to but thankfully I was able to rest in the car for a while. Patrick had no such luck. Too long a drive later, followed by some repacking faff, and we set off at 6:15 following the nicely groomed ski piste for the first hour or so. After this we turned off and started bushwacking our way up a pine forest, thankfully the snowshoes stopped us from floundering too much. We cleared the tree line and headed up the approach gully. Steep snow in snowshoes must be the most terrifying thing I’d done all week. 

Patrick approaching the climb. 

Me approaching the climb, starting to not like the snowshoes. 
C. Patrick Hogan

We reached the base of the climb and after the usual faff Patrick set off and led the first two pitches (WI 3+ and WI 4). It was then my block to lead so I went up the short WI 3 step and then continued to run it out over a 50 degree snow slope as the anchors were buried in snow, turning the 50m pitch closer to 90m. After bringing  Patrick up I led over another short WI 3 step full of rotten ice and handed him the reins. He flew up the WI 3+ pitch to get us to base of the crux which was, in theory, M4 WI 3+. However the ice section was completely dry so he traversed over on very thin and steep ice, went up a bit and then embarked on what is possibly the best lead I’ve ever seconded. He traversed back into the gully over a very chossy limestone slab that felt far harder then anything I had climbed before in crampons/ice axes. Composed of very small and sloping edges that all seemed to point the wrong way and break off far too easily; it made for very insecure climbing. At one point whilst seconding I took off my gloves and alternated between drytooling and full crimping the edges. He found only one terrier to protect the 10m traverse. The lack of ice continued with the final WI 4 pitch completely missing so deciding that we we already deserved the full tick and not wanting to be too sketchy we agreed to start the descent.

 

Patrick starting the crux pitch. In theory there should be some ice leading directly up from where he is now. 

Putting Stephen’s training to good use, we made an abolakov on ice far too thin for my liking and made a short abseil to reach the first anchor. From the there the descent went smoothly and quickly. The 90m pitch required coming off the ropes and down soloing to reach the next anchor which Patrick was able to do walking down facing outwards, whilst I daggered my way down. The only hiccup occurred at the very end when I was pulling the ropes and realised that I had forgotten to take the knot out. Thankfully it was only 5m or so above the ground and Patrick was able to quickly head up and grab it. I kept my crampons on for the gully and pine forest to avoid scaring myself silly, making it down to car 11 hours and 15 minutes after leaving it. Including the drive it was a nice 16 hour day. 

Patrick building the first abolakov. Lots of testing occurred before committing to it. 

Me doing the final abseil just before I did my oopsies. 
C. Patrick Hogan

8 Pitches, 4 Soaked Layers, 2 Climbers, 1 Belay Plate, 0.5 Gully

The weekend after coming back from the dolomites was looking pretty good so I head up to the Ben with Hans to have a look at some ice lines. Packing our bags in the north face car park the night before, I slowly began realise with horror that I had forgotten my harness in Glasgow. What followed was a rather hectic time; searching up how to make a sling harness and mentally preparing myself to climb in that, searching up how long the drive to Glasgow and back would take and mentally preparing myself for that. A last minute message to the AC group chat and a saviour quickly replied “I’m on way down to the car park and have a spare harness, should be there in about an hour”. Legend. 

At 3am, and not many more hours of sleep, the alarm went off and we were soon on our way up. A bag repack and shoe change at the CIC hut and then we were making our way up the unrelenting slope of Observatory gully. Either unfit or unwell, I was feeling like I was going to throw up on the approach and was taking advantage of numerous bergshround like features in the gully to rest. 

Some teams already ahead of us despite our early start.
C. Hans Swenson

I led the first pitch, not finding the climbing too challenging but having to frequently stop due to the huge amounts of spindrift coming down the climb. My belay plate had been left on my harness at home and it had been a while since I had belayed using an Italian hitch so then made a right meal of it and put huge twists in the rope, and when Hans led of on the second pitch he was mostly limited by me short roping him. Between the spindrift and a leaking water bottle all of my layers were completely sodden and I was still shivering uncontrollably approaching the end of p2, realising it would be a bad idea to try and lead in that condition Hans gracefully took over and led p3 as well. 

Me in the spindrift on p1. 
C. Hans Swenson

Hans on the rogue pitch with a brief respite of spindrift. 

Once above the hard pitches the spindrift thankfully stopped and we stopped for a moment to get some food down until I got too cold and wanted to get moving again. We alternated long pitches up the easy gully with my rests became longer and longer and the moving time between them becoming shorter and shorter. Nearing the top I laboured up to Hans, breathing heavily, calves burning, having to kick out a flat foot every other step. “Do you want the glory top out pitch?” He asked. I looked up at the cornice whilst all my muscles cramped up. “It’s all yours” I graciously replied “after all you led all the hard pitches and it’s your first time on the Ben, it would be downright rude of me to take it”. He chuckled and set off to find a way through the cornice and onto, quite literally, the summit of Ben Nevis. 

Yes please stop and take pictures. Take as many as you want, more even. Just please, I’m begging you, climb slower. My calves are resembling pulled pork at the moment. 
C. Hans Swenson

The top out equivalent of a false summit or, another term I heard recently and prefer, premature ejaculation. 

It had been a while since I had last been up there so I used my tried and never true method of approaching someone who looks like they know what their doing. This of course didn’t work and I ended up guiding the 2 extra people round to No.4, at one point stopping the others from walking off a cornice. 

Well done on not falling off the edge guys. Now please don’t fall down. 
C. Hans Swenson

We got back to the van around 6:30, really pushing the lack of headtorch to be able say we weren’t benighted. Once there, realising how shattered we (I) was, we made the call to not climb on Sunday and head back to Glasgow. 

This video was taken by Hans at the base of p2. Showing what some might consider the best conditions for learning how to use a giga jul for the first time. Another reason why Hans was short roped. 

Overall it was a pretty frustrating season for me. Between learning to cope with only having weekends - how militant I have to be to be able to take advantage of the time - and poor tactics dealing with the standard Scottish weather it meant I didn’t get a lot done. 

I started the winter with a decent amount of psyche but that seemed to fizzle out by midwinter when I moved to Glasgow. I forced myself to head out, knowing I’d regret it if I didn’t even try, so had some weekends where I was out on the mountain but both didn’t enjoy it and/or accomplish as much as I should have. Both for a variety of reasons; some my fault, some not. I had an excellent time in the dolomites and came back with renewed psyche but after climbing point five I realised I had had enough of winter and that the rock was calling.