Sea Kayaking

Great few days paddling round Anglesey with Dave Hunt and Pete Oldam. Neap tides meant it was a bit of a slog at times with some long days but the great weather and amazing location more than made up for it.

New Role

Since I last posted I've enjoyed a family holiday to North Wales and have a new job! I'll be sad to leave Hollingworth Lake where I have learnt so much alongside some great people but the role at Hopwood Hall college is a great opportunity. 

  

Lee quarry

I've spent the day with a group paddling on both the Irwell and river Roch. We just had enough water to play and practice some skills. Unfortunatly i'd forgotten the camera so here are a few shots from yesterdays mountain biking a Lee quarry. Great few days. 

Lancashire Climbing

 Had a quick blast round some local crags today. Enjoyed the prow at Wilton 1 and the Bouldering at Brownstones before finishing at Anglezarke. Stayed on the easy stuff giving the finger plenty of time to recover.

Heptonstall

First climb for a while due to a finger injury. Took advantage of the sunshine and headed to Heptonstall.

 

  

Ingleborough

Rosa had her first trip up Ingleborough today in the new Osprey papoose bought by Grandma and Granddad Manning. Great day.

Keld

I've spent the last few days on holiday with the family at Park House bunkbarn in Keld. Sarah and I had stayed there when completing the Coast to Coast and we can highly recommend it. We enjoyed various walks from the cottage including up to the famous Tan Hill Inn. 

Cardiac Hill

We were out on the trails with a local school group yesterday. The group are completeing their PE GCSE practical on mountain bikes. Everyone survived the notourious cardiac hill and enjoyed the decent back down to the lake. 

 

It feels like summer

Spring... it feels more like summer. It's been a busy start to March at the centre, we've had various kayaking, mountain biking and climbing sessions running. I also just about kept up with Alister Pittman, Ste Mason and James Wheeldon on a trip to Lee Quarry. 

What a difference a day makes....

After the rain and wind of yesterday, it was lovely to paddle in spring like conditions. The blue skies brought renewed enthusiasm from the group and everyone saw big improvements. Well done and thanks for a great two days.

Wet and windy

We managed to miss the worst of the weather hidden away on the canal today for the BCU two star course. Working our way through most of the syllabus in both canoe and kayak, we'll hopefully just be polishing things up tommorow. A good first day. 

Wild weather

Even the senior sailors in the team were reluctant to go out today. The weather has been wild so I've been thankful to be in the office preparing for the two star course we are running at the weekend. We'll be hiding down on the canal trying to avoid the worst of the weather i'd imagine! Heres a few more shots of the Glen Coe trip and Dan's journal entries that are worth a read. 

Momentous day on Anoach Eagach

I should have known there was trouble afoot when I walked into the legendary Clachaig Inn in Glencoe and found Tom wearing a pair of shorts and bent over a map studying the mighty Anoach Eagach ridge. After washing down haggis with a beer and catching up on the year since we last snow holed together on our winter ML training the conversation shifted to tomorrow's mountains. After weighing up the weather, avalanche risk and the technical difficulty of the Anoach Eagach route we agreed on a 6am start with full kit.

Having settling in at the hostel nearby we'd heard rumour that there was a bloke staying who'd done the Eagach 14 times before and was doing it again tomorrow. We sniffed him out downstairs but unfortunately he was too drunk to extract any advice from and was too busy working his way through a box of wine and bottle of whiskey!

The worst thing I could have done before bed was read the reviews of the route and look at the photos online and in the books. Sleep was poor with a night of tossing and turning in the bunk trying to not to think about all the technical sections and rope work.

After porridge at 6 we had a rapid departure and were parked up the valley and on the first scramble up to first munro and start of the ridge at Am Bodach. We made the first summit by 9am and kitted up with helmet, ice axe, crampons, harness and all gear and rope for the first ridge section.

There are basically three peaks after Am bodach and three ridge sections. The first ridge is called the Chancellor along to peak Meall Dearg then Aonach Eagach ridge to Stob Corrie Leith then Corrie Corcaig to Sgurr nam Fiannaidh.

Visibility was poor, not what we were expecting and we descended from Am Bodach to tackle the first ridge. In less than 2 minutes we stopped at a huge precipitous drop with rocks covered in snow. Tom was an utter legend here and knew exactly what he was doing. He found a biggish rock at the top of the crag and started digging with his axe around the base. Hey presto he found an in situ rope anchor with karribiner when we could use to construct an abseil. This was going to be more than I'd bargained for as we abseiled off the side of the mountain to a col hidden in cloud below. Tom was twitchy and impatient to get on with it and we took a while to get the rope sorted but it was great fun once we were on it landing safely on the wafer thin ridge in deep snow below. 

We dealt with Chancellor well and soon started to get the hang of the ground and exposure, digging deep steps as we wound over the tightrope ridge. The hardest section came after descending peak 2 at Meall Dearg and hitting the succession of gnarly pinnacles on the Aonach Eagach ridge section itself. The drops and climbs were precipitous and the going was tough as first people on the route having to wade through deep snow to find the route and ridge! There was sections of scrambling up chimneys and gulleys using your ice axe and bridging with your feet. Sections of down climbing on mixed rock and ice with nothing below gulp. Two squeaky bits where we had to set up belays to weave around a series of rocky spikes. Tom even dug a snow bollard at one point to use an anchor so he could belay me up what a legend! 

 

The pinnacles went on forever. At one point two teams bunched up behind us as we completed a belay. The ground was so challenging and severe I could literally only think about one move at a time and had to forget the entirety of the ridge ahead. Talk about the razors edge of now!

So relieved when we eventually started climbing again to the third peak at Stob Corrie Leith. I knew it was in the bag then as the third ridge was much easier and the pinnacles were the main challenge. We were both tired from the trail breaking in deep snow and the concentration, especially Tom who heroically led the roped sections I learnt so much.

We nailed the final section easily and after navigating off the final summit we stopped below the clouds with an amazing view over Loch Leven and the Glencoe valley drinking coffee and soaking up the sun.

I'm so pleased we pulled it off and there's no way I could have led it first time round. Grade 3 routes are definitely at the edge of my comfort zone but I really enjoyed it and it all felt very doable when broken down into bit sized chunks up close. It's a good job not all the munro's are this tough!

 Braving the white out on Na Gruagaichean                                                                   

Final day of the trip headed up early to bag as many on the Mamores as possible. We parked up in Kinlocheven at 7.30 and planned to work our way west from the furthest mountain east. Hilarious seeing Tom's pace at the start he reminds me so much of myself so keen to get stuck in on his second day and make the most of it. After hitting Loch Elide Mor at 8.45 and seeing the campers (!) bracing the snowy conditions we started winding up the trail to Sgurr Elide Mor, the one I'd limped to with Whittaker in 2013. 

Conditions deteriorated rapidly and we were soon thigh deep in snow in a complete white out. We adjusted our plans and decided to head to Corie Na Lochain then attack Sgor Eilde Beag which led along a ridge to the Munro at Na Gruagaichean. We got to the Lochain and could literally only see the hands in front of our faces. The large Lochain lake was completely invisible and buried deep in snow. Not phased and loving the winter ML conditions we made a bearing to find the edge of the ridge and start heading up to the first summit at Sgor Eilde Beag. We used every trick in the book to try and find the corner of the ridge - bearing, pacing, slope aspect, ring contours - but still we ended up off target and into the rocky buttresses of the east wall of the corrie. Banter. Started getting bracing so we stuck a layer on and dropped down away from the avalanche prone slope (today every slope except south has considerable avalanche risk) and contoured round to find the ridge. We knew we'd hit it when the aspect of the buttress wall changed on our compasses from east to south.

Finally we started climbing in the deep powder which helped warm us up again. The white out was immense and was a strong reminder of how tricky Scottish winter can be. As we neared the summit we both came very close to the east wall drop off so we stopped immediately to rope together and kept a ten metre gap with slack in case either of us walked off the cliff wall at the end of the mountain or through a cornice which so easy to do - the only feature we had to navigate was the side of the mountain and the compass bearing!

We found the first summit then made a plan to get to the top of Na Gruagaichean, pacing to the col, up to a pyramid high point, then to another col and up to the Munro summit. We were working brilliantly as a team shouting out pacing, critiquing each others ideas and roping each other. Took an age - 40 minutes to get to the pyramid which was only 1km metres away!! This would take less than 25 minutes on a summers day. Deep powder, strong wind, white out, dangerous cliff wall on our right which we were being so careful with made going very slow. When we'd agreed we were on the pyramid we then changed bearing and headed for the last 1km to the col and summit. 

At or near the col was when Tom stepped through the cornice and fell backwards down the side of the mountain. My weight easy held him and I couldn't believe he'd dropped off. I screamed at him to make sure he was OK and after hearing him confirm he was it took him a while to get back up - it was sheer and he couldn't easily kick into the side as the snow was so deep. He emerged like the frosty the snowman and classic Tom he first words were "I've found the side of the mountain!" After a quick hot drink we kicked on and found the summit. Debated our safest route off the mountain and decided not to continue along the ridge as planned and pulled off a fantastic team effort retracing our steps to the col and taking two paced bearings off the south side to bring us safely back below the clouds. Following the bearings and reading the ground off the side was such an adventure and we got it bang on.

Fun stretch back down to the valley and through woods and past waterfalls for a well earned hot drink at the ice factor in Kinlocheven. So much fun in the winter conditions and so much learned. "You saved me" said Tom laughed on the way out, "I owe you a beer now!"

What an epic week 8 winter quality mountain days (QMD's) bagged, ten munros with two famous ridges and lots of new parts of Scotland explored. A very lucky boy.

Scottish Winter

I've been in Glen Coe for the past few days enjoying the scottish winter. We were a bit limited with what we could do due to the unstable snow pack but managed a traverse of the Aonach Eagach and a day on the Mamores.