Two days in North Wales

I was in Wales last week for two days alpine training with the director of the International School of Mountaineering (ISM), Pat Littlejohn. Pat is one of the world's leading climbers, and was recently granted an OBE for his contribution to British mountaineering over the years. When I first started climbing as a youngster in SA, his name was known even there, so I must admit I was a bit apprehensive about meeting and climbing with him. This came about through my contacting the ISM, and after chatting with Pat's wife Eira (she rang me at work to discuss what course would best suit me) we agreed it would be best for me to spend two days doing some winter climbing with Pat so he could assess where I'm at in terms of climbing skills.

Pat lives at the foot of Mt Snowdon in North Wales, about 3 miles from the lovely village of Beddgelert. I stayed at a B&B called Plas Gwyn, a 19th century house right next to the stone bridge crossing the Colwyn river.

I needn't have been nervous about meeting Pat. He's a normal, down-to-earth, all round smashing bloke, and, as expected, really knows his stuff. Because ice and snow climbing is quite new to me (I had only done a bit in Canada with Teddy McCrea last year) I find it extremely tiring, and I'm not as fit as I need to be yet. Towards the top of Thursday's climb my leg muscles began to cramp up, Pat immediately showed me a different technique to achieve the same actions, but using different muscles, enabling me to continue climbing where otherwise I'd have collapsed in a heap. The route we did was the Left Hand Y-gulley out of Cwm Lloer in the Ogwen Valley. We covered short roping, moving roped together over mixed ground, descending snow slopes, snow belays etc - all things they teach on the Alpine Summits and Skills course, effectively enabling me to bypass this course and go for the next level, Classic Alpinism.

This route brings one to the summit of Pen Yr Ole Wen (978m). As you can see it was a beautiful day, and a good freeze the previous night meant the conditions were perfect for British winter climbing. The other guy in one of the photos below was someone we met on the summit, he had soloed one of the easier climbs.

On the Friday we did a long ridge climb, just a rock climb this time, but in mountaineering boots carrying our rucsacs. We climbed the Pinnacle Ridge (and continuation) on Mynedd Mawr, walking up to the summit of the peak after the climb.

Pat's verdict? Well he's happy with my climbing skills, and said he felt quite safe climbing up after me when I was roping him up sections I had led. He's happy for me to do the Classic Alpinism course; the only thing I need to work on is my general fitness, although he said I'm not far off where I need to be, and there's plenty of time still to prepare. He also suggested I do the course in July rather than September, as the weather is more reliable then.

Two great days in the mountains learning from one of the world's best. Couldn't ask for much more.

Canada - January 2009

In January of this year, I visited an old friend, Teddy McCrea, a South African who now lives in Calgary. The last time I saw Teddy was in 1999, when he was passing through SA, I remember Lara was just a few months old at the time (she'll be 10 in July!). So it was great to catch up, and also to meet Lynda, Hillary, and Leo the dog (a.k.a. Hosehead).

I was there for about 10 days, and we were really lucky with the weather. Most days were clear and sunny, with temperatures around zero or even just above. It was only the last two days that we had a cold snap, the temp dropping to about -25 C. That was certainly a new experience for me! But the following pics are typical of the weather we had for the majority of my time there.

Well, besides catching up with Teddy, I was also there to try ice climbing, so after hiring some equipment, and also buying some other nice gear that would have cost three times more in Ireland, we set off to the Junkyards, a popular practice area for ice climbers in the Canadian Rockies. Ted showed me the basics, just getting the hang of walking on steep ice is a bit nerve wracking at first.

We then set up a top-rope on a vertical section.

I managed to get things together enough to lead a very easy line also, before we retired to the Grizzly Paw pub in nearby Canmore; we spent quite a bit of time in this establishment over the next 10 days!

The next day Ted, Lynda and I went cross-country skiing. Spent quite a bit of the day on my backside in the snow.

And of course we had to build a snow-man back at the house; Ted later used Photoshop to make the snowman look about 12 feet tall, a picture we sent back to my kids, they were well impressed.

We walked into Grotto the following day, but being a Sunday, and also one of the more accessible areas, it was very crowded. We opted to do some sight-seeing, so we drove via Kicking Horse Canyon across the BC border to a town called Field, really beautiful area and lovely houses. We also stopped off at Lake Louise on the way

We then went back to Grotto towards the end of the day, and walked in as the last of the other climbers were walking out, so we had the place to ourselves. Ice climbing is extremely physical, it's much harder on the whole body that rock climbing. The latter relies more on fine movements, whereas with ice climbing it's much harder to conserve energy, you end up using a whole bunch of it. The following pics were taken at Grotto, or on the walk in to it.

We were back at the Canmore Junkyards a couple of times after this, we climbed on the upper sections of it too. After leading up "Scottish Gully" on the left of the area, Ted dislodged some good sized blocks of ice, one of which hit me on the back of the leg as I was trying to run out the way. I was limping for a couple of days, but fortunately suffered no other damage.

The highlight of the trip, from a climbing point of view, was Cascade Waterfall. This is a multi-pitch route, close to the Trans-Canada highway, and is very prone to avalanches as it lies beneath a huge snow bowl for which it basically serves as a funnel. There was very little snow higher up when we did it though, so not much danger of anything coming down. It was also a glorious day, we were down to T-shirts very soon. We abseiled off before the last steep section, as Ted felt that the ice was not in good enough condition to guarantee secure ice screw placements (well at least that's our story and we're sticking to it)!

The weather deteriorated a bit after this; despite that we did try one last trip back to Grotto, but we had Leo with us, and it was too cold for him. He ended up sitting in the snow lifting his feet up off the ground. We couldn't have left him in the car either, so we ended up just doing a bit of a drive up in the mountains behind Canmore.

This was a fantastic trip, a brand new climbing experience, my first time ever in North America, and great to catch up with Teddy.