Winter climbing day, Cairngorms, March 3rd.

Wednesday found Iain & Kirstin having a day out with Phil Griffiths who had already joined us on both the winter skills course and the navigation & snowholing expedition.

Prior to this day, Phil had spent some time "top roping" on an indoor wall and wanted to get some experience of winter climbing. This was a big step as most people would generally have some experience of summer rock climbing before moving on to winter stuff, but Iain knew a location that he felt would be easy enough for Phil - allowing all necessary skills to be looked at whilst on safe ground.

As can be seen in the photo, the weather conditions were exceptional, blue skies, sunshine and no wind meant that it was a warm walk in and a warm start to climbing - until the sun disappeared behind the ridge!

Iain took Phil & Kirstin to Twin Ribs - a popular teaching venue with Glenmore Lodge and others as we were to discover - as a party of some 15 students from John Moore's Unviversity were about to start climbing on the main (right hand) rib.

The left hand rib proved, however to be more appropriate and we were left alone on here. Iain led the first pitch after some considerable instruction on building belays & running belay placements. Phil followed and here can be seen belaying Kirstin having built his own multi-point anchor belay. Note the correct belay plate orientation with the live rope in Phil's downhill hand and the dead rope in his uphill hand.

As well as teaching Phil about anchor points using various types of gear placement, Iain taught Phil how to bring anchor points to a central attachment point. In this picture, the central attachment point is Phil's rope tie in loop and the rope is used to attach to each anchor being brought to an HMS karabiner used to attach to the rope tie in loop and secured with clove hitches which allow easy adjustment of the ropes when equalising the load on the anchors.

This method of using the rope to tie into anchors is that typically used by climbers when they are leading alternate pitches.

Phil was also shown the same method but using dyneema slings to bring the anchors to a central attachment point - easier to escape from if your second decides he doesn't want to lead the next pitch and also the choice of mountaineering instructors who are working guiding clients who need to be secured at the belay point before the instructor moves off up the next pitch.

After seconding Iain up the first pitch and then belaying Kirstin, Phil was allowed to take the lead on all subsequent pitches with Iain alongside to coach and place running belays if necessary.

Despite the fact that the sun had now disappeared behind the Faicaille Ridge of Coire An T Sneachda the party moved steadily managing to remain warm whilst focussing on the nuts and bolts of traditional multi-pitch climbing techniques, doing so in what was pretty much, an Alpine setting.

Eventually, as we approached the crest of the ridge above, the rocks ran out and Phil was forced to use a snow belay - in this case, a deadman.

Phil secured himself to this with a clove hitch and an HMS karabiner but belayed from his rope tie in loop with a belay plate, setting up, in effect, a semi-direct belay and in doing so putting himself between his second and his deadman anchor.

It is not normal practice to belay directly to snow anchors - even though in this case the anchor was "bomber" ie very solid. The generally accepted view is that snow anchors are not as solid as rock anchors and in such a situation you should always put yourself in the system to allow for additional shock absorption and just be attached anyway to prevent the chance of your falling or slipping - not advisable when you are belaying someone else!

Note also, the dead rope stowed in a depression specially dug out for it. The dead rope should never be allowed to slide off down slope as this can have all sorts of negative implications.



Very soon, time ran out as it was almost 5pm which left Iain & Phil a little time to look at how to deal with descending down slope or having to retreat from a climb and here they look at abseiling from a snow bollard.

After this the team descended back to the car park - enjoying fabulous views and a great sunset. A perfect end to the day!

Phil found the day an exciting and exhilarating experience which really stretched him and certainly exceeded his expectations of the day. Although a steep learning curve to use a phrase, he thoroughly enjoyed himself and felt that the day was a fitting culmination to the previous four days of courses which has left him keen to push himself further in the outdoors.

Phil hopes to return to us in the summer to undertake a summer rock climbing course.

OMWS2010 Cairngorm navigation & snowholing expedition, March 1st & 2nd.

After the departure of most of the OMWS2010 Winter Skills Group on the Monday morning, Iain & Kirstin and six remaining members of the group headed for Coire Cas to begin the next course.

By now, the road & car park at Coire Cas had been cleared and hundreds of skiers were enjoying the unusually deep
snow conditions. The depth of the snow can be seen here as this telephone box just above the bottom station was buried up to the roof and just beyond this we were stopped by a member of Cairngorm Mountain staff and diverted away from the slope which can be seen above left which was apparently category five.











As we walked up by the bottom ski tow dodging the skiers everyone "hotted up" resulting in a stop to remove clothing and an excuse to have a cuppa. The weather conditions were perfect with a light North Westerly wind and great views all around.

As we climbed the Faicaille a Coire Cas the views just got better & better and eventually, we could see as far as Ben Wyvis about 50 miles away beyond Inverness.


When we arrived at the summit of the Faicaille A Choire Cas, the weather changed into typical Cairngorm whiteout conditions. The group had already been practicing pacing, identifying features and taking a /walking on a bearing. Now walking on a bearing was essential to get from point to point without falling down the slopes of Coire An T Sneachda on our right.

As the visibilty dropped, the windspeed increased and it was well below freezing. The whole experience was now one of some foreboding and apprehension as the whole group were well aware that we were now wholly reliant on our navigation skills to get us safely to our snowholing site in what would be for less experienced parties - potentially lethal conditions.



After successfully navigating round from the Faicaille A Choire Cas via Stob Coire An T Sneachda, the group descended into Coire Domhain to the snowholing site. Everyone in the group were doing an excellent job of walking on a bearing and pacing and despite what was virtually zero visibilty, confidence was increasing. We arrived at the snowholing site at 5pm to find only one entrance visible - likely there were more snowholes buried due to the heavy snow of the previous week and subsequent strong winds, but we had to set to and dig our snowholes as unfortunately the one we found was already occupied.

This turned out to be a difficult task due to hard layers of ice encountered. The whole group had split into 3 teams to commence digging in, two teams were successful at excavating snowholes big & comfortable enough to spend a night in. The 3rd team had to give up after the roof collapsed on their second snowhole attempt and were only too happy to be offered room in the already occupied and excavated snowhole we had originally discovered. All three teams managed to cook a meal and get comfortable for a good nights sleep but digging the snowholes had been a hard "real" experience of just exactly what can happen out there on the mountains!

The above shot shows Kirstin in our snowhole after our night out.




Tuesday morning dawned clear & bright, still with a strong, cold north westerly air stream.

This shot shows the sun rising over Beinn Mheadhoin with the snowhole entrances dotted about the slope. Spindrfit can be seen blowing along the surface of the snow evidencing the strength of the wind.

Everyone packed up kit after breakfast and all were ready to continue with our navigation excercise by 09;30








From the snowholes, we navigated south west on to the summit of the ring contour above Hells Lum Crag.

Here we did some more feature identification exercises before taking a bearing to the summit of Cairn Lochain. In this picture the group can be seen with the expanse of the Cairngorm Plateau beyond them with the North Top of Ben Macdhui in the distance.

This picture was taken for us by a passer by on Cairn Lochain. Despite an ominous looking start to the day with grey overcast skies to the west and a strong cold north westerly airstream persisting, by the time we got to the top of Cairn Lochain the wind had died, the sky had cleared and again, we had fabulous views.

The group had found the ascent up the south east Shoulder of Cairn Lochain interesting in that most people had underestimated their paces per 100 metres of distance. This was almost certainly due to the constantly varying consistency & depth of the snowpack - one of the factors that gives people the biggest headaches when trying to work out distances travelled and one of the main reasons for navigation deferrals on Winter Mountain Walking Leader Assessments!

On approaching the summit of Cairn Lochain in poor visibility Iain made sure that he was ahead of the group to make sure no-one walked over the cornices and fell down into Coire An Lochain and not without good reason too!

This picture shows the cornice overhanging the No 1 Buttress by, in places a good ten feet. The whole rim of the coire was overhung by a cornice that was massive in places and all of the slopes below were banked out.

It was indeed good to see that climbers had had the sense to avoid the place as the avalanche risk would have been extremely high and climbing would have been treacherous.

Half an hour away from the car park at Coire Cas, a tired but satisfied party walks along the Choire An T Sneachda trail with Choire An T Sneachda and its Faicaille ridge in the background.

After leaving Cairn Lochain, the group had traversed west to avoid the coire cliffs and gullies and descended to the hanging valley above Twin Burns before traversing across to & descending the ridge between Coire An Lochain & Lurchers Gully.

Trudging through windslab of varying depths made us all somewhat jealous of the sensible people we saw making easy progress on snowshoes, but we all made short work of the distance. The group arrived back at the car park at 3pm with everyone feeling tired but having a deep sense of satisfaction at what had been experienced and achieved over the past 28 hours.

Outdoors Magic Winter Skills 2010, February 27th & 28th continued

In this picture Iain coaches one of the clients on what most considered to be the most challenging aspect of ice axe arrest - that of going down a slope head first on your back.

Everyone came away from this winter skills course with a heightened sense of their abilities to cope with winter conditions and improved self confidence. Having been on a winter skills course with us, many clients return to do bigger and better things as the next few posts demonstrate.

Kendal Mountaineering Services organised all aspects of this winter skills course including accommodation, food and as can be seen here - beer! For £148 clients got 3 nights accommodation, two days of instruction, a full English breakfast on both mornings and an evening meal on Saturday night. Real ale was on tap at £2 per pint. Everyone thought we offered exceptional value in every aspect of the course. We like to stay ahead of the competition in terms of value for money and overall experience.

Finally, a group shot of this years OMWS2010 team. People came from all over the UK to join us on this event and many had made long journeys to be here. We had 6 guys from Ireland, 4 having travelled from Dublin and even a chap from Belgium came to join us.

Our thanks go out to all of these people who attended - making it one of the most successful winter skills weekends ever and we hope to see you all again - whether it be on future courses or just out on the hill.

Our thanks also go out to Patricia & Richard of http://www.nethy.org/ for providing our accommodation this time; and for being so very flexible.

Outdoors Magic Winter Skills Course 2010, February 27th & 28th

For the first time ever Iain & the Kendal Mountaineering Services team encountered problems with too much snow rather than not enough! The preceeding two days prior to the start of the course had seen up to half a metre of fresh snow dumped in the Spey Valley north of Drumochter and at first it looked as though no-one was going to get to the venue at Nethy Bridge. We are pleased to say though, that due to the herculanean efforts of the road clearing teams, the A9 was open by the early afternoon and the clients started arriving at 5pm with the last arriving finally at 3am on the Saturday having undergone a long detour via Inverness to join us.

With the road up to the Cairngorms shut on the Saturday, alternatives had to be investigated and some good slopes were discovered on The Hills of Cromdale only a few miles distant from Nethy Bridge. This venue proved to be so good that we stayed there all weekend!

The first two pictures in this post show people practising the position for ice axe braking and then step cutting - two of the most commonly practiced aspects of winter skills courses. Also practised on the first day were aspects of step kicking and snow belays.

In this picture, Iain can be seen discussing the merits of a well constructed ice axe belay. Other snow belays demonstrated included a reinforced buried axe belay, a snow/ice bollard and a Deadman belay. All of these can be used in conjunction with a bucket seat and an indirect/semi-direct method of belaying - useful techniques to know if you find yourself having to ascend/descend a steep snow or icy slope with a less confident person.

With step kicking/cutting and ice axe braking practice, we had little time left on Saturday to look at snow belays. By 5pm the light was starting to fade and some people wanted to get back to watch the rugby on tv at the bunkhouse.

Sunday saw us back at the same venue continuing looking at snow belays. Here, Iain's group test one to destruction (although it didn't fail) Everyone was tasked with building the various snow belays and then everyone else would set about trying to get them to fail. It was definitely a good way of learning whether or not each one had been properly constructed.

Following a morning looking at snow belays, the groups returned to a steeper, icier slope on Sgorr Goaithe to look at crampon footwork - moving up, down & across slope on what was ideal neve.

Following this Iain discussed avalance assessments and demonstrated the Rutschblock test demonstrating that although the SAIS had indicated all NW aspect slopes were likely to be of a considerable hazard, the one we were using was in fact only category two.

Finally Iain's group looked at building snow shelters before closing the course and heading off the hill - another winter skills course completed.

Winter mountaineering day, Ledge Route, Ben Nevis, Monday 15th Feb.

As well as running Kendal Mountaineering Services, Iain also gets "contracted in" as a freelance Instructor to work for other organisations and when he was asked to coach winter scrambling skills for a party wishing to attempt Ledge Route on Ben Nevis he certainly wasn't going to say no!

Having just parked at the Alt A Mhuillin top car park this picture shows Paul, Chris and Neil wth our intended destination behind in rapidly improving weather conditions.

After a 45 minute walk in, Iain took this shot of Carn Dearg Buttress looming through the mist.

Here, the lower tier has an impressive & well formed grade 4 waterfall giving Iain the impression that The Curtain
grade IV,5 was likely to "be in", sadly, it wasn't!

Anyway, our route was up the left hand side of and on to the top of the impressive buttress in the upper part of the picture. Ledge Route starts to its left in No 5 Gully which can be made out to the left of Carn Dearg Buttress. Shortly after entering the gully we move out right on to a ramp leading above The Curtain before moving up a left slanting gully to reach the top of Carn Dearg Buttress.

As all good Mountaineering Instructors should - Iain had been talking to the guys on the way up to the route to find out what past experience they had gained of winter mountaineering and it transpired there was a fair level of experience between all three. Neil has his Summer ML Award and all three of our party had attended various winter skills courses and had been guided in the area before by other mountaineering businessess as part of an annual excursion in to the area. After a discussion, it was decided that they needed some consolidation on ropework and belay techniques.

So, after some practice at short roping techniques, this shot shows the group, led by Neil ,heading into the lower part of No 5 Gully before turning right on to the ramp of Ledge Route just before the icicles in the middle distance.



Once on to the start of the ramp the feel is one of slightly more exposure and so it was felt prudent to "pitch" this part of the route. Neil led off around a slight narrowing & steepening of the ramp, built a belay and then brought Paul & Chris up to him before securing them and then setting off again.

This next ropelength brough him into the left hand slanting gully from where he set up a snow belay and then the other two followed on. Here Chris & Paul are just entering the gully from the ramp.




This shot is taken from just below the top of the Gully. Neil belays Chris & Paul in a semi-direct fashion using a buried ice axe anchor and a bucket seat as his belay.

Once the guys were up to him they "self belayed" using their own axes whilst Neil soloed up to the platform just above and then brought the guys up on an indirect or body belay. This was perfectly acceptable on this easy bit of ground.

At this point it was decided to break for a bit of lunch and discuss how we would tackle the next section. It was agreed that Paul would take over the lead for what was pretty much, the second half of the route. Also at this point, the cloud began to thin and sunshine, blue sky and views began to appear. also, by this point, the air was almost completely still.








After lunch, we headed right as per the route description, past a pinnacle block to another platform and the arete. At first this was relatively easy terrain and so Paul short roped Chris & Neil as can be seen here.

Good winter short roping technique is being demonstrated ie all three have their axes in their uphill hands ready for self belay in the event of a slip and the rope between the second & third man is downhill of them both thus preventing the second from being easily dislodged should the back man slip. Paul has chest coils locked off and a number of smaller hand coils - correctly held in his downhill hand and also locked off.






Inevitably, the ridge got steeper and narrower and so the level of exposure increased again to the point where short roping wasn't a safe option.

Paul had just "pitched" the narrow section below and then found a suitable block with which to set up a direct belay consisting of a sling and an Italian Hitch. This picture shows Paul, belay in position, bringing Chris & Neil up to him.

Chris & Neil were left attached to this belay point before Paul pitched only a matter of 10M to the end of the exposed section and then brought the guys up with an indirect belay.

From here on, the ridge got easier & broader and we rapidly gained hieght using mainly body belays and one direct belay before short roping again to the foot of the final buttress.







During our ascent of the most technical part of the ridge, it had again, clouded in and snowed heavily - obliterating the footsteps of a large party that had gone ahead of us. Then suddenly, the cloud lifted and we could see to the top of our route as well as everywhere else.

This view looks across to Tower Ridge and beyond to the North East Buttress. Many parties could be seen on Tower Ridge, Number Three Gully Buttress and Green Gully. At this time (about 3:30pm) a party could be seen heading up just above the Douglas Gap West Gully (the diagonal groove just above the foot of Tower Ridge) It was Iain's guess that they were going to have a late (and in the dark) finish!








After a couple of final easy pitches, the team reached the top and removed ropes & harnesses, then it was time for a brew and a butty.

It was surprisingly calm on the top of Carn Dearg and we could see the sun through a thin layer of cloud - good brocken Spectre weather.

As was evidenced by everything having frozen solid, it was clearly bitterly cold but as it was almost calm we didn't notice the cold. However, time had raced by as it does when you are having fun and so we needed to descend quickly.









A bearing was taken from where we were and Iain reckoned that it would be ok to descend straight towards the outflow of the Halfway Lochan - avoiding the tops of N & S Castle Gullies and it turned out to be a fine descent route.

We soon came out of the cloud into a beautiful sunset and a snowline that was over 1000 feet lower than it had been at the start of the day. Getting down took a while as it does on Britains highest mountain, but the clients were very happy with what they had achieved and were looking forward to using the skills they had learnt on other similar routes during the course of the rest of their week in the area.

Winter Mountaineering Day, Jan 30th continued

An "action shot", Craig brakes during the second progression of ice axe braking whilst Alex looks on.

Teaching Ice Axe Braking involves using the pick of the axe buried in the snow to arrest a slide. The axe shaft is held diagonally under the chest, hand over the head of the axe and the other over the spike at the bottom of the axe shaft.

Moments after this shot was taken Craig reached out to the right with the pick of his axe and stabbed it into the snow causing him to spin around into the uphill facing position which is the correct one for braking as seen in the last picture of the previous post.

Iain's coaching from the above picture was that Craig needed to be "resting more upright" on his elbows and it was noted that his left hand was not covering the spike at the base of his axe shaft - the danger with that is that once in the uphill facing position, the uncovered spike could "dig in" causing the axe to be ripped out of the person's hand - not ideal if you are trying to brake with it!




Soon it was time to pack up and head back to the car and the party headed straight down between Harrison Sticke and Pavey Ark and it was here where this last picture was taken. It had been an action packed day filled with skills and challenges and both Alex & Craig and Iain were happy with what had been delivered.

It was an unusual and demanding day with the breadth of what had been covered, but that's what the guys wanted, so Iain made sure that's what they got! This is what we at Kendal Mountaineering Services are famous for - bespoke days in the outdoors where you decide what you want and we'll make it happen!

Winter Mountaineering Day, Jan 30th.

After the "big freeze" we had a big thaw and then last week the skies brightened once again and the temperatures dropped to around freezing during the day and as low as minus five at night.

The forecast was looking good for the Saturday when Craig Porter, along with his friend - Alex, had booked Iain looking for a good quality mountain day with some elements of navigation, scrambling and winter skills all thrown in together.

This was a lot to cover in a day, but Iain was happy to deliver. This picture shows Stickle Ghyll in Langdale as Iain & the guys headed up to Stickle Tarn to carry out the day's requirements. As you can see it was freezing up nicely and, given a few more days of the low temps would have made an excellent ice climbing trip. It was not to be though, sadly, by Monday night, the next thaw had set in!

This picture shows Alex (left) and Craig (right) practicing spotting on the lower rib of Tarn Crag - a nice easy bit of grade one ground. The technique of spotting was new to Alex.

Spotting is where people help each other ascend a scramble where really, a rope isn't necessary but the use of hands to prevent a person falling backwards off a short step or to hold feet in place, will ensure sufficient safety. It also assists with efficient passage on a scramble and is an excellent icebreaker for getting people who don't really know each other to work together as part of a team.

Anyway, this provided a short alternative to the navigation skills Iain had been teaching the guys from the moment they left the National Trust car park at the New Dungeon Ghyll hotel. Shortly after this, they would encounter some hard snow and a session of "step kicking (otherwise known as using the boot as a tool) would ensue.

Eventually we reached Stickle Tarn which was frozen over with what looked to be a fairly thick layer of ice. The views all around were stunning and the cold northerly wind somewhat numbing so everyone donned Goretex which had been unnecessary up to this point.

Iain decided to break what was left of the day down into a further navigation session east of Stickle Tarn followed by a guided ascent of the classic Lake District Scramble of Jack's Rake. Following that - as we would be amongst the best of the snow above Jack's Rake, we would look at what winter skills training time would allow.

The picture above shows the guys practicing taking a bearing and the view in the background is of the Bright Beck valley with the summit of Sergeant Man beyond.

Taken in the opposite direction, this view is of the east ridge of Harrison Stickle with Stickle Tarn below and right - the south face of Pavey Ark. Jack's Rake is the diagonal groove ascending this face.

After an hour & a half of good navigation practice finding features such as spurs & re-entrants, pacing & timing, we headed over to the foot of Jack's Rake.

As can be seen from this picture, the weather and conditions were fantastic!

This picture shows Alex & Craig just above the step on the traverse where Crescent Climb comes in from below. Jack's Rake is considered to be a classic Lake District grade one scramble; and is on most hillgoers tick list at some point.

Before setting off up the route, the party donned helmets, harnesses and roped up - all wise decisions given the fact that some ice was falling on to the terrace from the cliffs above. Despite some water ice, the route was not in serious condition - more so a pleasant intro to winter scrambling. However, Iain felt roping up was necessary and some parts of the route were pitched whilst Iain short roped the guys where appropriate.

We saw many people soloing Jack's Rake and also one individual retreating - without a helmet! Possibly a wise choice given the conditions.

This picture shows Alex & Craig coming up the final groove next to the rock tower which marks the end of Jack's Rake. Despite pitching the first part of the route, we made rapid progress thereafter and completed the scramble in little over an hour and a half. During this time we enjoyed the warm sun and the shelter afforded by the south facing aspect of our route. We also watched an RAF Rescue Sea King as it carried out a rescue of an injured person next to the outlfow of Stickle Tarn.

We encountered a lot more snow on the latter half of Jack's Rake and this was fairly hard neve. However, due to the number of people having done the route in recent weeks there was a flight of footsteps all the way. Alex & Craig thoroughly enjoyed this classic ascent and at one point Iain was heard to say "I love my job".

Above Jack's Rake there was a reasonable amount of hard neve and ice, so Iain coached Alex & Craig in the techniques of step kicking and step cutting.

These techniques were new to Alex but not to Craig who had attended a Kendal Mountaineering Services Winter Skills course in February 2008 followed by a Cuillin Ridge Traverse on Skye during May of the same year.

Here, Alex & Craig practice the position for Ice axe braking before having a go at the skill. In the distance, hills of the Grasmoor range overtop the ridge between Thunacar Knott and High Raise.