The Magic Crack
Jumped onto the famous Magic Crack with Will & Joe. Brutal finger work, would have preferred to take axes. Thankfully Will took the crux pitch.
Jumped onto the famous Magic Crack with Will & Joe. Brutal finger work, would have preferred to take axes. Thankfully Will took the crux pitch.
Joe and I were aiming for North-East Buttress, but the heavy clag made finding the start and best way up pretty tricky. Instead we opted for Tower Ridge in the hope that I'd recognise it from the winter.
The route finding is super obvious (despite the best efforts of Gary Latter to confuse things) and we moved together the whole way. Finished up round CMD arete - a long way for Joe's first big Scottish day!
Warm up day in Scotland with Joe on the Buachaille. Easy scrambling on the route, the hardest part was the (incorrect) steep slabs on the approach!
A weekend wild camping in the Black Mountain with Erinna, including surprise castles, caves (Carreg Yr Ogof) and clear skies!
A roasting hot wild camp+climb adventure with Cat and Louise in southern Snowdonia. There's not much else in the area that's very tall, so we decided to make the trip longer by hiking Cadair three times. Step 1 was to start from the south side and traverse the mountain to a camp by Llyn y Gader. The next morning we were up early to climb Cyfrwy Arete and Table Direct, before descending to our bags at the base and then summiting once more from north > south. Very sweaty, very fun.
A post-wedding trip with Al to the mighty Scottish Dubh-loch. I wanted to try something a bit harder but in the end we settled for the Black Mamba (VS). This turned out to be a wise choice with a Gary Latter navigational masterclass and buttcracks abound on the 9 big pitches. Combined with the 8km cycle and 90 minute approach on foot we managed a 13 hour day car-to-car. Lucky it doesn't get dark in the summer in Scotland.