I'm alive, and packing for winter

It's been a while, eh?

Sorry for the impromptu hiatus but I got to the point where there was nothing really that I was doing worth writing about and filler felt pointless. Not that I've got a huge reader base but hey ho. But now the fun begins - it's almost Christmas, there is snow on the peaks and it's almost time to unleash the ice axes on some unsuspecting Scottish routes. It's time to start checking the gear for this winter.

I'm psyched.

Packing for Winter

For all his faults Charlie is surprisingly fair when it comes to complimenting me to others. When going through some of our photos from a weekend in Wales last November we came across one of us prepping to leave the hostel, with my bag neatly packed whilst Charlie's gear was literally thrown all over the car boot and the floor. Charlie chuckles, points at me and says 'he may climb like a knob but the boy knows how to pack a rucksack'.

My neatly packed bag on the left, Charlie's...pile on the right.

When going through my emails recently there were a few with a theme - people wanted to know what goes into my pack on the hill in winter. Honestly I was a little surprised because I've spent all of maybe two weeks on the hill in winter, but as I was planning on spending a day going through all my winter gear to check what needed replacing before this season, I thought I may as well blog about it. After all, if Charlie thinks I can pack well then who am I to judge? Just don't take my packing as gospel - I'm far from an expert and there are people out there who can tell you far better what you should and shouldn't be carrying!

Pictured below is everything that would be in my pack at the start of a day on the hill, minus any of the clothing I'd be wearing from the off.

1 - Rope
At the moment our main winter rope is my beast - a 60m 11.5mm dry-treated Mammut rope. It's seen constant use in summer and winter for a couple of years now, so it's almost time for retirement but it's probably got another season in it. I'll probably be replacing this with two half-ropes for next season, purely for weight reasons - it's bloody heavy!

2 - Harness
Petzl Corax 2 - simple, rugged, fully adjustable leg loops (have you ever tried getting a harness on and off over crampons? Go ahead, try it) and comfortable enough to be worn all day.

3 - Winter rack
It's not all there I'll confess - a lot of my winter gear is in storage still. Bearing in mind I'm still seconding most of the routes we do and would only be leading on a scramble, my rack is pretty pared down compared to Charlie's. In addition to the normal assortment of quickdraws, slings, hexes and nuts I've added a pair of ice screws, a bulldog and pitons (both not pictured).

4 - Hydration
Ask anyone I've climbed with - I drink a lot. In the summer I normally have a massive 3-litre hydration bladder, but in winter I can get away with a couple of litres. In the thermos is normally hot Ribena, purely because it hydrates better than coffee or tea (both of which are diuretics).

5 - Crampons
Grivel G12 C2 crampons. In a crampon bag so they don't pierce everything else in my bag. 'Nuff said really.

6 - Pack
Those of you who are super observant (and may or may not need to get out more) will notice this is a different pack to what I was using on the hill last winter - this is a Mammut Trion 35 which if I'm honest is a far better size for a one-day trip. My Lowe Alpine is great when I need to carry a sleeping bag, tent, food and water for a couple of days but when on the hill, once you strip harness, rack and crampons out of it it's basically empty and tends to flop around a lot.

7 - Helmet
An absolute essential, especially in winter when ice and rock fall is more likely. Comfortable, impact protective with head torch webbing/clips is what you need to look for. Always make sure it's CE certified too!

8 - Ice Axes
I use a pair of DMM Fly ice axes which are pretty much spot on for what I do - straight and long enough to be used as a half-decent walking axe but with its slightly bent shaft, T-rated pick and trig rest mean it can still be used perfectly well on routes well above the grade I can currently climb. If its a walk rather than a climb I'll only take one axe and replace the pick with one from a DMM Raptor which saves my palm from bruising on the Fly's raised pick when walking with it. Oh, and leashes too - dropping an axe is never a good idea.

9 - Spare insulation
Winter is bloody cold, so a decent packable lightweight insulation layer is essential. I tend to skew away from using down in anything but a basecamp jacket purely because when down gets wet it becomes useless, but a synthetic jacket will keep me warm even if it's sodden. This is a Mountain Equipment Compressor jacket which is my go-to insulation piece at winter.

10 - Camera
Panasonic Lumix DMC FT-5 - perfect for me and what I do. Crush proof to 100kg, drop proof from 2m onto concrete, freeze proof and takes decent photos. What more could a man want?

11 - First Aid Kit
A small but essential bit of kit on the mountain. I'll do a detailed breakdown of what I carry in another post but a decent First Aid Kit and the training on how to use it should be equipment in the locker of any mountaineer. I really don't want to be that guy who has to call Mountain Rescue for an injury that could be easily treated myself.

12 - Goggles
Wales last winter proved to me how essential these were. Up on the summit of Tryfan the conditions were so awful that we spent less than a minute on the summit with faces bent in the face of biting, freezing hail and/or driven powder snow. These goggles allow me to see when the going gets nasty - when it's most important! Tinted lenses help to up the contrast of colours, making it easier to differentiate areas in low light.

13 - Ice Axe maintainance kit
After a bolt fell out of my axe head in Scotland I always keep a spare pair of bolts, allen keys and tape in my pack for emergencies.

14 - Jetboil and food
A warm meal can be the difference between life and death in a survival situation. In other situations a warm lunch just below the summit is a huge morale boost. I take a couple of high-calorie dehydrated or vaccum packed meals, my burner and spare gas every time we're on the mountain. Simply melt some of the abundant snow, cook your food, and hey presto, smiles all round. Use the left over water to re fill my thermos for a double whammy of warmth. Chocolate is always essential, though.

15 - Spare gloves
I was in Snow and Rock when I first started climbing and I overheard two staff talking about spare gloves, and the phrase 'have spares of your spares' has stuck with me. At least two pairs of warm, waterproof (and importantly dry!) outer gloves are always in my pack, along with a spare pair of liners. No matter what the day throws at me (or how many gloves I drop) I can keep my fingers dry and toasty.

The final product, everything in or on the pack

Not pictured, but always carried:

Snow shovel and probe
When going out me and Charlie always  have at least one shovel and probe between us, ideally with a probe each. The probes give us a chance of finding one another if either of us is caught in an avalanche and the shovel means we can dig out shelter in an emergency. A good metal collapsible design is the best, with a wide, flared blade for moving soft snow quickly.

Head Torch
A bare essential, but embarrassingly enough I can't find any of mine when I was setting up this photo. A good, comfortable head torch with fresh batteries and an adjustable beam is what I look for. Something like the Petzl Myo RXP is perfect. Oh, and always carry spare batteries.


So that's my gear. It's not an exhaustive list of everything I carry for every situation, it will change depending on what I'm doing and who I'm with and as I learn more about this whole climbing affair, but for now, I hope this satisfies some questions.

See you all soon! (I promise this time)

Adventures in Scotland: Day 4 - I'm an idiot

Only a short one today.

It's our (well-earned) day off, so we had a lie in, a hearty breakfast and shot into Fort William with the single-minded task of sourcing Charlie the brightest, lariest pair of softshell trousers possible. Now, before I go on I must say that Fort William is quite probably the most depressing place in the world. It's uniformly grey, there's absolutely no colour and it's just...bleak. The kind of place you get into and out of as quickly as possible. The place doesn't even have a coffee shop, to Charlie's extreme dismay.

We didn't get lairy softshells, but Charlie did get a rather loud Haglofs midlayer, which he was very pleased about. He hasn't yet shut up about it.

We got back to the B&B, and after planning our final climb on Friday (conditions being good, we're looking to do No.3 Gully on the north face of Ben Nevis) and started to sort our kit out. I went to file down the pick on my ice axe when I discovered that one of the bolts that hold the pick to the handle had...gone. Fallen out at some point, probably from being under-tightened. So bugger.

Thankfully it's not the crux bolt, so in an emergency I could climb on it, but I really don't want to be climbing up No.3 gully with a wobbly ice axe pick. It's hard enough without worrying about the positioning of a specific axe. So tomorrow morning, before we go for a spot of indoor pure ice climbing at the National Ice Climbing Center, we're headed to Jewsons to pick up a pack of bolts. It's odd how rare stubby M8 bolts seem to be in Scotland. I've got to buy a pack of 100 bolts, to replace one for a short period. Got to love this economy.



Bugger.



(The Adventures in Scotland series is a collection of all my posts from my first foray into winter mountaineering. Find all the others here)

Adventures in Scotland: Day 1 - Buachaille Etive Mor

It's been coming for some time, it's been planned, everything had been bought and now finally, after all that, it is winter and I am in the Highlands.

Today is a good day.

We arrived last night at about 6 having driven past the snowy highlands in absolutely beautifully bright moonlight and clear skies, and got set up in our (frankly for the price, palatial) B&B and got a good night's sleep. This morning, it was up at 7.45, a full cooked breakfast and then to the mountains (with a quick detour to Kinlochlaven to get me some crampons).

As today was my first day out on snowy hills, we decided to take it easy and do a simple route on a mountain we'd seen on the way in the night before. It wouldn't be too taxing - conditions aren't perfect but they are far from truly awful - but it would give me a chance to get some solid practice in on a proper ascent and a summit on my first day. We didn't get onto the mountain proper until around 11am, which we would later work out was far too late.

As it turned out it wasn't quite like that, with my inexperience, complete lack of technique and initial lack of fitness and confidence slowing us down quite significantly. One section on the walk-in was rather sketchy and after vainly scrambling on verglassed rock and frozen turf, experiencing a couple of slips and being absolutely 100% convinced I was about to die I grabbed out my ice axes and hauled myself up. Trapsing up to where Charlie was waiting I was met with a little bit of abuse, which to be honest I probably deserved, but it was time to do some proper winter stuff. Now it was onto the first snow field on out chosen route (Curved Ridge, for those wondering), a wide vertical band of snow maybe 150 meters from bottom to top, where we donned crampons and had some practice at self-arrests, ascending, descending and traversing with crampons and ice axe technique.




After all that and having climbed the height of the snow field, we decided that the delay we'd experienced would prevent us from summiting and descending safely before last light. As such, we said we'd do a single pitch route then descend and head home. The route itself wasn't taxing, but climbing with axes and crampons is a new experience, and it was initally a bit uncomfortable using tools on bare rock, but we eventually made it to the top for pasties and a glug or two of hot ribena. Then it was an abseil back down the route which unfortunately a little bit short, necessitating some incredibly sketchy down climbing. After that it was a front-pointing escent of the snow field, crampons off, down the footpath and home for hot ribena and dark chocolate hobnobs.

Looks like we're headed for the Ben tomorrow.

Keen.

Glorious.

(The Adventures in Scotland series is a collection of all my posts from my first foray into winter mountaineering. Find all the others here)

A spot of refurbishment

It's project time here, folks. Not a huge one, but a project nonetheless.

Over the Christmas period my cousin - who is now getting married - was clearing out all of the stuff he'd left at his mothers for the last decade or so. Uncovered were a treasure trove of his (and, interestingly a lot of my father's) childhood toys, books and boxes. One unexpected discovery was a barely-used C.A.M.P Zephyr 25.5" (65cm for those of a metric disposition) walking ice axe that a friend of my cousin's had left at his house forever ago. This was just as I was beginning my current obsession with mountaineering so not knowing a huge amount (and not one to look a gift horse in the mouth) I took it for myself.

When I got it back to my flat having left it at home, I got a better look at it and discovered it was a little bit worse for wear for its decade-long stay in a cold garage. There were several problems:

1. The (overly large) grip was pitted and the rubber perished - if I tried to use it to hack into ice it would probably come away in my hand. It had to go and a replacement sourced.

2. The pick itself whilst mainly in decent shape had patches of rust on them. Whilst not a major issue, it's ugly and some rust leads to more rust so this had to go.

3. The metal shaft isn't the grippiest. Despite the fact I doubt I'll often have to use it holding it by the shaft, if I did I'd want something more comfortable and grippier than plain metal.

So, on a quiet Friday afternoon after university I sourced the bits I needed and set to work. First things first was to strip off the perished rubber grip, which was achieved scarily easily - I was instantly vindicated in my ideas. There was some glue still on there so I washed the entire thing, dried it off and grabbed the electrical tape and started wrapping.

Before, with perished rubber grip, plain shaft and rusty pick

After, re-wrapped in fetching yellow tape with no rust!

After about 3 layers and one and a half rolls of yellow electrical tape I had a decent thick covering on the shaft of the pick, as well as a wrap of green to make sure no one nicks it (not that it looks all that expensive, but hey, it's mine, so...). I also wrapped the pick protector in tape otherwise it's rather difficult to see if the cover is on when you're anything more than an arm's length away.

Next job was to remove the rust spots from the pick and axe head - this required a little more finesse. Or, to put it more accurately, taking a flat-head screwdriver and scraping away the rust spots 'till the thing looked a little less brown and a little more shiny.

It still needs a little bit of work, and possibly a new grip (I'm undecided as to whether I need it yet) but for a relatively old axe, the little bit of love has done it some good and will see it used for a little longer!