Scratch the surface of Beauty, and Terror may lie , not very far below. High in the Appenines, Lago Santo Parmenese sits at 1500 metres. The Rifugio Mariotti stands at the waters edge, gazing across to 300 metre cliffs and the Appenine crest…… an idyllic scene which echoed for me… Continue reading
A Six-Pack for Dolly After one of the wettest Highland summers ever, there came a dry interlude. It was still raining heavily in Glen Coe, but over east in Glen Shee, Dolly and I found – at last – a clear dry day. We started up Carn an Tuirc, and… Continue reading
Northern Delights The Chief Delight of Scotland’s Far North must be Foinaven, one of the best mountains in Britain. (However the distance from York to Ben Hope is rather further than Paris, thus affirming Mike Spence’s dictum that doing the Munros is a great feat of motoring). Having managed a… Continue reading
Muir Cottage Trip, Braemar May Bank Holiday Club Trip, 30 April – 2 May 2016 Although the forecast had initially looked doubtful, we ended up having good luck with the weather, making this a fantastic trip. The Muir Hut (owned by the Cairngorm Club) was a perfect base and members… Continue reading
Maria and I have had Tower Ridge on the ‘to do’ list for a long time. Winter climbing on the North face of the Ben is always an amazing experience, and Tower Ridge has quite a reputation – the description in the SMC guide starts by saying it is ‘one… Continue reading
I was ambling along daggering the snow with my axes, and noticed that the rope seemed to have got rather long. “How’s rope ?” I called to Paul…… getting “2 metres left” for an answer. A trifle unsatisfactory. That meant there would be rather more than 40 metres of rope… Continue reading
I concentrated quite hard, keeping my weight directly over the fine edge of snow, and carefully planting axe, pole, left foot, right foot…….. repeat. As snow aretes go, Sron nan Guibhas was definitely “narrow”. There’s over 800 metres of it altogether, sometimes comfortably a few metres wide, but several times… Continue reading
Grabbing the opportunity of a sneaky day off work, the rare occasion of prolonged winter conditions in the Lakes, and the prospect of not being mobbed by weekend crowds; Dave and I headed off to Borrowdale, and a day’s winter climbing on Great End. We chose Window Gully… Continue reading
Getting high on white powder To general surprise, the Club weekend at Newlands on 13th/14th February coincided with a short period of good weather in the Lake District. Most of us started at Seathwaite and following Mike’s clever idea, we walked past Sty Head and onto the Corridor Route to… Continue reading
York MC weekend away (15 – 17 January 2016) Friday Maria and Mike set off very early on Friday morning to get to Arrochar in time for a climb in on The Cobbler. Given the snow conditions, the plan was to do the traverse of the south and central peaks. Deep… Continue reading
