Climbing
I keep a log of all the climbs I've done. It has always been in text format, though it's possible I might get round to HTMLising it at some point. You may also wish to try the (very UK-biased) climbing purity test.
Gritstone
Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis, is less than 1400m high. Why, then, has Britain been consistently at the forefront of mountaineering since the dawn of Alpinism? Edward Whypmer was perhaps the great climber of the Golden Age of Alpinism; since then there have been Mallory and Irvine, Lord Hunt and the successful 1953 Everest expedition, Bonington etc., right up to the current day when alpinists like Jules Cartwright and Mick Fowler are still pushing standards, winning piolets d'or and so on.
They all cut their teeth on the rocks of Britain, none of which are world-class in terms of size but very many of which have the right combination of ferocious technical difficulty and ease of access. Like bouldering, climbing short technical routes on outcrops is a fantastic way to improve technique. In addition cragging, unlike bouldering, develops the book-keeping skills of alpinism: ropework, safe but efficient gear placement and a healthy fear of falling. Of all Britain's crags the gritstone edges of the Peak District are beyond compare in terms of ease of access and the technical challenges they offer.
One of my favourite gritstone routes is Traveller in Time (E4 6a) at Ramshaw Rocks. This was my first E4 lead and I climbed it on-sight. I've put together an animated gif showing the spectacular crux (500kB).
Skye
I first went to Skye in 1999, with Steve. We planned to traverse the Cuillin ridge at Easter time, and were dropped at the end of Glen Brittle. Unfortunately the worst night's rain I've ever known (during which the ferocity of the rain led me to use a pee bottle rather than go outside; the next morning I discovered that I had thrown the contents all over my toothbrush, which had fallen out of my rucksack) followed by a day of fog meant we escaped via Coire a' Ghrunnda and we spent much of the next two days in the Sligachan Hotel watching the rain. However on our final day we got a break in the weather and made an ascent of Sgurr nan Gillean. They say that on one's first visit to Skye everyone either falls in love with the island or swears never to return. I fell in love with it.
A return early in 2001 didn't happen because of foot and mouth but a larger group of climbers made the trek north for Hogmanay and New Year 2002. We accidentally discovered a stunning new crag with unclimbed walls of compact gabbro up to 60m in height and set about developing it, and since then we have returned several times and added new routes from Diff to E5, as well as making various additions to the sea cliffs at Neist and Flodigarry.
Details of the new routes we have produced are available in the SMC Journals for the relevant years, and we intend to publish a mini-guide to the areas and routes we have explored early in 2004. This will include photo-topos, maps, accurate locations and further information.
The Greater Ranges
The Alps form a theme park for mountaineers. They offer an almost limitless supply of routes an easy cablecar ride from town. If you like, they offer "convenience danger". Perhaps the best example of this is the Chamonix valley. In several ways this was the birthplace of the modern spirit of alpinism, namely climbing mountains for no better reason than because they are there and it's fun. Early on, various scientific expeditions ventured onto the glaciers around Montenvers, but the reasons for these expeditions rapidly became spurious. People began to climb the mountains for pleasure; the most rapid phase of development of Alpinism has been called the "Golden Age" and although it can be said to have ended with the Matterhorn tragedy in 1865 many of the greatest achievements occurred on the Mont Blanc massif above Chamonix.
I have made several trips to Chamonix now: firstly in 1999 Steve and I went to climb the Aiguille Verte and Mont Blanc, and succeeded on both as well as the Cheré Couloir despite lacking experience. In 2000 I returned, had an epic on the Aiguille de l'M and then climbed Mont Blanc du Tacul solo. In 2001 I returned again, this time as a warm-up expedition before travelling to Nepal to attempt Pumori. This time I climbed many routes, the highlight of which was the Frendo Spur on the Aiguille du Midi. Unfortunately I didn't get to the Alps in 2002, but I returned in 2003 to climb, amongst other routes, the Dent du Géant and Rochefort arête and the North face of the Tour Ronde. In this year I also tried my hand at parapenting from Planpraz, which was great fun.
The Himalayas, by contrast with the Alps, are not convenience mountains. To climb anything there usually involves a multi-day walk-in, at least a couple of weeks at Base Camp and often problems with altitude. Moreover, it always involves a sizeable amount of bureaucracy. Although there are agencies that will handle this for you, it means that no Himalayas expedition can be organised on a mere whim.
So it was with some surprise that within a week in May 2001 my situation changed from someone trying, without much success, to get enough people to pull together to make a small Himalayas trip happen to being a member of an international expedition to Pumori. The trip turned out to be highly varied, always interesting and unforgettably spectacular, but also something of an emotional roller-coaster, from leaving the UK on September 11, 2001 to realising that half of the Spaniards we had been sharing Base Camp with had been killed in an avalanche, to the beauty of dusk on the Khumbu glacier and the tranquility of the vast stupa at Boudhanath in Kathmandu.
Climbing Yarns
The Cheré Couloir
Having arrived in Chamonix two days previously, and with me never having worn crampons before, we decided to climb the Chere Couloir (about Scottish 4) on Mont Blanc du Tacul in the morning before the afternoon storms moved in. Yes, we are a little mad.
We arrived at the foot of the couloir and Steve led the first easy pitch up past the bergschrund to the start of the rock. I moved up to join him, and he led the next pitch across the couloir into the shelter of some rocks. As I was seconding this we heard a whirring noise louder than the ice shards that had been coming down, and saw an ice screw whizzing past me, dropped by the party ahead of us.
The next pitch was the first, and longest, of the crux pitches, and it was mine. It started nicely with some excellent mixed climbing up the rocks above the belay, which were climbed torquing with my Aliens, before regaining the couloir at the start of a narrow section of nearly-vertical ice. I put in an ice screw at the start of this section, but in the interests of doing the pitch cleanly (and finishing the pitch before I got knackered!) I placed no more gear until the top of the steep section quite a lot higher. There I found a belay and brought Steve up to me. He led the next pitch which was again quite steep, and I seconded it. At this point, having done the hard parts of the route, we had to decide whether to climb a further two pitches and then descend by the normal route up Tacul or to rappel off and head back directly to the cablecar in view of the approaching weather. We rappeled back down in four pitches and traversed back across the Col du Midi, quite slowly as the effects of the altitude had by now caught up with us. As we walked up the final arete lightning could be heard, and the cablecar station declared it unsafe to be outside because of lightning risk. We waited about an hour for the cablecar as they were stopped from running by the bad weather, and then heard "Next cablecar two minutes!" as a break in the weather approached. We returned to Chamonix and headed for the pub, relieved to be out of the storm.
17 Hours on the M
It was still dark when the alarms went off at 5am. We had a good range hidden throughout the tent so that at least one would wake us up. We got ready quietly, aware that the others were still sleeping. Having brushed our teeth and readied ourselves we slipped, almost unnoticed, out of Camping Les Arolles.
We had already made our first mistake; thinking that the Blaitiere and Nantillons glaciers looked flat (as viewed from the Aiguilles Rouges) we had taken neither crampons nor axes, relying solely on hiking boots to get us to the foot of the climb.
It was a quiet day on the Mont Blanc massif and we had no trouble getting on the first cable car. There had been heavy snowfall recently and the slopes around the Midi station were still thought to be avalanche prone. We weren't going that far; instead we alighted at Plan de l'Aiguille.
The Aiguille de l'M looks very different from here. It looks a bit like a tiny Grandes Jorasses, offering a steep north face to Chamonix. From here it makes a good partner for the Dru, seen further away on the other side of the Mer de Glace. No sign of the friendly Mickey Mouse shape familiar to the Chamoniards.
After a moment or so we had figured out which was the path towards the Blaitiere glacier and set off. We quickly passed the small Lac Bleu and left the path, heading steeply up the side of a ridge of morraine left behind as the glacier has retreated. It was fairly hard going and for a moment I was pleased to reach the top. However we had come up the ridge too far along and had to move along the top for a while before reaching the glacier proper. Once there we crossed the generally flat, crunchy snow quickly and made shorter work of another morraine beyond. Another small patch of easy snow led to a rather less pleasant morraine, full of small loose gravel frozen in place. Beyond this lay the Nantillons glacier.
We moved down a small slope onto the glacier; this had to be crossed in order to reach the col between Pt. 2503 and Pt. Albert. It sloped downwards and the ice was considerably harder than the neve on the Blaitiére. The footprints we had to follow were poor. I was a few metres in front of Ian when I heard a yell: "Argh help!"
I looked back to see Ian sliding out of control down the ice, helmetless and with no axe. He hit a rock but to my dismay bounced off it and carried on going. After a few more metres he hit a bigger rock and stopped. Without too much regard for footholds I legged it back across the ice and checked he was OK. It turned out he was winded but otherwise only scratched and bruised, confidence slightly dented. We both donned helmets at this point. We were still unroped as, without axes, there was nothing we could do were the other to fall.
I was impressed with his determination to carry on, but the rest of the glacier crossing was made very slow as we used the toes of our hiking boots to kick little steps in the icy crust. It was tiring work but eventually we reached the safety of morraine.
We climbed up to the col just below Pt. 2503 and I scrambled 3 metres to the summit; Ian didn't like the look of the snowy patch on the summit block. After this diversion we continued across the snow and rock along the north face of the M towards the start of our route, the NNE ridge. The cloud was gradually billowing up and blocked our view across the Mer de Glace. By the time we reached the start of the route we were both quite tired and took a while to don rock shoes and unpack the gear and ropes.The walk in that should have taken two hours had taken over four. There was a party about two pitches ahead of us but this was the only time we saw them; they had gone light and climbed fast.
Here we made a rather bad decision, the second of the day. We took everything in our packs instead of taking only water and a warm jacket and leaving everything else at the foot of the route. This slowed us down considerably on the route. It was to fall to me to lead all the pitches as Ian was still rather shaken after his slip on the glacier. The first two were lovely and we were quickly up to the belay at the foot of the third pitch; this had a couple of awkward moves but didn't delay us unduly and we were soon on the enormous ledge at the foot of the fourth pitch, "a marvellously polished Chamonix-style chimney" according to the Alpine Club guidebook. A horribly polished offwidth according to me. There were holds, however, and there was a reasonable amount of gear including an in-situ nut and a couple of pegs. Between these I contrived to find myself just over three metres below the top, level with the last piece of in-situ gear and with no more opportunities to place protection of my own, standing in a stacked foot jam.
Using a technique combining leg barring, smearing on the polished wall behind me and keeping as much of the rest of my body as possible in contact with the rock I got a handhold on the lip of the ledge and pulled myself up, quickly setting up a belay from the in-situ abseil tat. Ian came up with rather more elegance than me, grappling slightly with an awkward nut, and I set off on the next pitch. This began in a similar vein, though slightly easier, but hopes of an end to the difficulty ended when the entire crack became full of ice. I punched through this to find a soaking hold behind and pulled over into a small icy diédre. Placing a cam at the back of this I moved up and left, belaying slightly prematurely due to the incredible rope drag from the badly extended cam.
The next pitch I can only describe as awful. The crux consists of a set of short vertical grooves; I could make no progress in the one I attempted to climb and had to aid much of it. There was a hairy moment when the peg I was aiding from began to creak. I slammed in a cam 4 above it and moved on, but this was only resting on two and a half cams so I pushed on, placing a cam 0 above and moving on as quickly as possible, removing the useless cam 4 after me in case I needed it above. Eventually I came to the belay, next to a letterbox and rather cramped. Ian followed in similar style, pulling on gear as he came.
I nearly took a wrong turning when setting off for the next pitch but eventually realised how the route took me through the letterbox and round. There was a great deal of soft snow lying on the rocks above this point and the going was rather treacherous in our rock shoes. 
This pitch and the next led us to the airy summit without too many more problems, however, and we quickly took photos before the clouds descended again, and drank some much-needed water.
We were very late by this stage and it was imperative to get down quickly. Ian wanted to go back via Montenvers in order to avoid having to re-cross the treacherous Nantillons glacier, and I agreed. In order to do this we had to deviate from the recommended descent. I lowered Ian back down the top pitch and then downclimbed it after him, unprotected but on a belay from below. We made a short abseil back to the letter box and then found that the ropes were hopelessly tangled. It took almost half an hour to untangle them and get the ropes down; after this we were able to set up a proper abseil and in a 55m abseil and a 60m abseil we reached the side of the snow couloir between the M and the Petits Charmoz. At the foot of both abseils the ropes got stuck; on the last one I had to solo up about 10 metres and remove it from a crack. Eventually, however, we were ready and slid down the soft snow in the couloir. After a short period of being lost we found a direct path through the scree towards the Grand Balcon Sud and began the descent.
Two hours later we were at Montenvers. The last train had gone long ago and we were a little concerned that Adam and Claire might have initiated a rescue, so we left news of our safety with the hotel staff and continued the walk down to Chamonix. At 11pm, 17 hours after setting off, we returned to the campsite. Luckily the pubs are open till 2 so we hadn't missed last orders!
Beyond the Clouds
This is an extract. All the material to do with my Nepal trip can be found in the Nepal pages.
The following day I was due to fix rope with Johnny. As I felt better
than the previous day I decided to stick to this plan. As I was getting
ready the heel bale on one of my crampons broke and I had to borrow one
of Gary's. We jumarred up the ropes that Gary had fixed previously and
reached the high point in about 3 hours.
I took the lead as I was more
experienced than Johnny. Progress in the fresh snow was very slow; each
step had to be kicked several times to give it a firm base and allow it
to take weight. I moved up to the crest of the ridge and then climbed
up it, moving below a couple of icy cornices. After I had run out a
full rope length Johnny moved up to join me. At one point I reached a
cornice directly above a steep fluting and had to make a frightening
climb over the cornice. Above this I traversed right into a fluting and
climbed further up. The snow was deteriorating even from its previous
poor condition, and I was running low on snow stakes. I moved around a
large serac and tried to continue but the rope drag was too great. I
placed a snow stake, meaning to bring Johnny up to join me, but
realised it was the last one I had. We had to return to camp, feeling
rather disappointed with our progress. I had forgotten to apply sun
cream during the climb and although most of my face had escaped serious
burning the tip and underside of my nose and the area immediately below
my lower lip were extremely badly burnt, and took about two weeks to
heal completely. The tip of my tongue was also burnt due to having
panted for breath so much in the dry air.
I felt quite low that night but got a good night's rest at Base Camp
and was more cheerful the next day, despite being in more pain from my
sunburn. I had certainly had enough of fixing ropes though. I felt
there was no way I could be as fast as Purna and Gary without
someone with whom I could share the leading, as Johnny had not been up
to any the previous day.
Purna and Gary were on the mountain again and going well, but soon after having climbed a short section of WI3 they ran up against a very dangerous section of very steep snow with crevasses to one side and no worthwhile protection. They called in on the radio and explained the situation and Steve told them to come back: a good decision. I spent much of the day bouldering on the endless rocks around Base Camp.
Read the full story on the Nepal pages.
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