After a full day out at Kaprun on the Saturday we fancied a shorter tour, so drove over to the Osterhorngruppe for a gentle skin up to Spielberg and Wieserhörndl. An excellent, safe pair of objectives for a short day out.
A weekend wild camping in the Black Mountain with Erinna, including surprise castles, caves (Carreg Yr Ogof) and clear skies!
Clay and I spent the afternoon climbing on the impressive Wildcat Crags, sat above the rather bizarre town of Matlock Bath. Excellent rock and routes for only my second ever outing on Peak limestone.
After our first tour together earlier in the year, Evelyn and I made plans for a big day out to this mini-north face route on the second highest peak in Austria.
We caught the first lift up through the tunnel in the mountain and raced down to the glacier, only to find we would be likely alone on the nordwand as the crowds headed around the corner towards the normal route. Breaking trail through the deep powder was hard work, although the crux of the route proved to be a large step across the bergschrund that needed an ice screw to protect. Shortly later we were overtaken by a band of cavalier Romanians, whom we followed to the traverse over and down to Vent. A hard, tiring ski out for tired legs and an aching head.
Proclaimed in the guidebook as "one of the all-time Mid Wales classic routes", we found the crag at Craig Cywarch in a rather damp, vegetated condition. Undeterred, and hoping never to need return to this Classic Rock destination, we set off of a team ascent and were pleased to see the route improve considerably after the first, dripping pitch. Overall it was a rather cold day, clearly illustrated by the chilling temperature inversion in the valley below.
Don’t confine yourself to thinking in the vertical! 10m high cliffs can offer 100m+ routes if you go sideways. After the fun I had last year on Herford's Girdle Traverse at Castle Naze, a New Year's trip to the Peak gave me and Dave a great chance to try another classic horizontal adventure. Several hours later, our very long, windy & cold girdle traverse was complete.
