Friday 22 August 2014

Road trip to the Alps and North Wales

 
Summer holiday!! Having had a great time on Skye and had plenty of leg fitness training, its time to get the arms going again. So I loaded up my very small Fiat Panda and headed down to wales to catch up with some friends and do some climbing.  
I managed to do some climbing at Gogarth,in llanberis pass, Tremadog and at the Orme. Heres a few picures of some sunny climbing in the pass.
 
 
Matt on the first belay of 'Super Direct' on Dinas Mot, looking down Llanberis pass behind.


Matt about to commit to some crux moves on the final pitch.
 
From wales I collected a good old friend Andy who I have had many a winter adventure with, always with good spirit and laughter. We headed out to alps and ended up in Saas Fee for abit of free uplift acclimatisation.

On the way up the Allalinhorn, a pretty easy 4000er but great to acclimatise with a sleep back in the valley. If you stay in Saas Fee or Saas Grund in the campsites, the uplift is free. Pretty useful knowledge.  

 
That night there was an almighty thunderstorm and Andys tent got flooded. Waking to damp kit and drizzle we ditched our next climbing plan and headed fr Chamonix to get some Beta and see what we could do next.

Aiguille Du Peigne. Another off the lift aclimatisation peak inbetween poor weather days. I had done the pappilons arete before so we did the Lepiodoters route and on to the summit via the normal route. Loads of inspiring routes to go back for on that peak.

 
Finally we went for the North Face of the Grand Paradiso, a nice warm up for North Face climbing. This was a last minute decision as there was another one day weather window. The hut was full so we Bivied, which was great and a cool spot for Andy's first Bivy.



We didnt have it to ourselves, in true alpine style, eveyone climbed together.  

On the final summit ridge.

 
We left the Alps early due to frustration with the weather. So I headed back to Devon to see family and old friends and catch up on some sun bathing before returning to North Wales for some more rock climbing fun.



A different method of trying to get Sophie back to the first bolt. Not very often the belayer gets higher than the climber.  
 

Blair showing us how its done on aparently the best 7c in North wales in beautiful evening sun, after we got rained off Grochan in the Llanberis pass that morning. I stuck to my 6c.
 
A day at Tremadog with Emma dodging showers.

Me squirming on Barbarian

Pink Trousers!