The weather was freezing cold. The winds were cold and biting. Determined to get a climb in, we headed up to Castle Naze (poor choice) and battled up two fairly mundane routes. Then went for a walk.
Today at Castle Naze we did a girdle traverse. This means that rather than climb upwards for 10m on any of the normal routes, we instead traversed horizontally for most of the width of the crag. Incredibly fun but also highly antisocial! Some climbers find these routes horribly contrived, we thought it was hilarious.
Spending two nights in the Rossi and Volante Bivouac, we summited Castor and Pollox in a day via the normal routes as a part of our acclimatization. My head was feeling pretty rough after the first ascent to the hut, so we slept it out for a night and then beat the rush to top out on Castor before the queues arrived from the Italian hut below.
The forecast was looking quite poor for the coming week, so we spent our weather window on the ski up/down Castor from the Ayas Hut. After trimming his skins to size(!), Will and I opted to make a depot lower down for speed, while the others lugged their kit to the top to enjoy the drop-in from the summit ridge. A windy day with a hard snowpack which made the skiing quite unpleasant, followed by crevasse rescue practice and ash-tray grappa for dessert!
Just down the road from Arthur's Pass lies a discrete little turning into a nature reserve car park. Venture down the path and you enter Cave Stream, a waist deep, freezing cold, underground river which winds its way through the hillside to emerge a kilometre or so upstream. The small plaque casually suggests that a headtorch and shoes might be helpful. A very cool little subterranean adventure.
Day 2 in Yosemite, and I teamed up with Brooke and Heather for a trip up the Central Pillar of Frenzy. Five superb, hard pitches made for a very emotionally draining experience as my lack of ability at every flavour of crack climbing technique began to show.
