Another bivy night on the Barmstein, except this time in the snow. Adam likes it (apparently) when we do a route slightly outside his comfort zone, so we hiked up in the snow after work, ignored our snow shoes, and dug ourselves a coffin for a shivering night on the summit. The two bottles of wine helped.
This weekend was the BMC's Expedition Planning Seminar at Plas Y Brenin. I delivered the opening lecture about the use of IT and Google Earth to aid expedition planning, which turned out to be a fairly unknown concept for many in the room both young and old!
More details on the BMC's website.
Plans to spend a few days in the high peaks of Mount Aspiring National Park were put on hold as the weather turned wet and grim. Erinna and I chanced a trip up Breast Hill to the east, which turned out to be cloud and rain free with a stunning sunrise as well. One of my favourite ever wild camping spots, and the closest to a mountain summit that I've ever spent the night.
We traversed the high points of the Brecon Beacons, from Fan y Big to Corn Du on the Saturday, and following a wild camp a long walk back around on the Sunday. A thankfully dry weekend for my first trip across the South of Wales.
Is this the easiest 4000m peak in the Alps? Despite several trips to Zermatt I'd never made the short plod from the lift station across to the summit, so it was a good choice for our day 1 tour warmup. After a short ski down we traversed around to the Ayas Hut in Italy for the night.
After we abandoned Zermatt, we all took the train to sunny weather in the mountains around Salzburg. Will, Will & Cameron went for a short climb on the Adlerspitze, whilst I went for a long hike up to the summit of Brennerin just east of Attersee. The last of the winter's snow will linger for a good while yet.
