Some of you may have noticed that during the past year a number of the trees at the bottom of Peak Scar had been felled. On Saturday afternoon, Simon C, Carmen, Gordon T and Peter E joined up with the Cleveland Mountaineering Club to move some of the resulting logs away from the crag and down to a forest track where they could be collected by the Hawnby Estate.
Yosemite - a mecca for rock climbers, and (in)famous for its gnarly offwidths and runout slabs. A flick through the guidebooks, and there are thousands of routes - but closer inspection reveals they are mainly in the higher grades. And a recent thread on UKClimbing.com asked “is there enough in Yosemite for an E1 climber?”. So what hope for a couple of VS bumblies like Carmen and me?
A handful of brief visits over [Read More…]
Almscliff bouldering 18th Nov 2008
Looking at the weather forecast it looked good to go on Tuesday so Jim & I set off from York early, arriving at the crag approx 10.30. We were not the first at the crag.
The sun shone & we worked through our warm up set on Low Man, Jim decided to work the Matterhorn boulder arête as it’s a bit highball & I set my main target of the [Read More…]
It’s sunday, it’s 7am and I have a hangover. What could be better than a scramble in the Dark Peak? Snuggling back under the duvet and nursing my head quite possibly, but as I’d already arranged to go I bolted breakfast, hastily packed a sac, and headed over to meet Guido and Crofty. Two hours later we met Alan and Kate, a couple of New Zealanders based in Leeds, and headed up the [Read More…]
On the Road Oct/Nov 2008
The objective of this 4000 mile road trip round the USA was to try and climb or walk in every state we visited, a journey that would hopefully take us through Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Illinois & Kansas.
The trip was generally very successful but we made a few mistakes had some bad luck mixed in with the good so here is how [Read More…]
…do you have to sit around drinking beer listening to an ever dwindling committee plead poverty.
All went quite well this year despite being only Simon Fox and I sat at the top table. In a show of competence set to rival John Sargent’s mad dancing skilz I managed to not nominate the only person ever to want to be on the committee! Sorry Richard - if I don’t nominate [Read More…]
With the prospect of bad weather and a poor night’s sleep on the Friday night before the OMM, Rob secured us a room at Chez Julie over near Cockermouth, along with John Byrne and Pete Wright. Friday morning dawned too early for the drive over to the site. All went well until the queuing traffic at Seatoller. A quick repack of gear (more substantial tent) and we arrived at the [Read More…]
One weekend running around in foul weather wasn’t enough, so at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, Carmen and I headed off to Edale for the Dark & White Mini Mountain Marathon - a 3 hour score event. As forecast, the cloud was low, it was drizzling, and it was windy - ideal conditions in fact.
After a 5 minute warm up running through the village and fields, and [Read More…]
A brief OMM report. Alan Kitchener. Long Score.
Spent Friday night at Seathwaite in Will’s campervan..luxury!
8.20 start..very windy but not raining…yet!!
Big up from the start to our first control near Glaramara summit. Then sw to Esk Hause avoiding the very tops and getting two more controls on the way. Then ne to a control near Sprinkling tarn and on down to Styhead. Conditions now atrocious, both of us [Read More…]
So said Andy Mayhew’s excellent Mountain Weather Forecast for last weekend, at ukweatherworld.co.uk. And in most people’s view, he’d have been absolutely right.
But we and over 2000 others begged to differ, and so Alan, Rob, Pete B, Carmen, and I headed for Borrowdale to take part in this year’s Original Mountain Marathon (OMM). The weather earlier in the week had been poor to say the least, with heavy rain and widespread [Read More…]