Wild winds and clear skies on Snowdon at the start of our MDES New Year's trip. We joined Crib Goch at the halfway col (scene of a historic igloo construction) and finished up to the summit, with everyone still standing.
Clay's final day out in Austria, and we drove out towards Chiemsee for an alpine-style traverse of the Kampenwand. This distinctive ridgeline is accessed by a very ancient lift, so ancient that it had broken down by lunchtime. The ridgeline was a great mixture of moving together, soloing, short pitched sections on solid rock and a couple of abseils. Would make a great winter traverse with an approach on skis...
After yesterday's failures, we stayed low and climbed a great pair of bolted lines (Atemlos and Reise durchs gelobte Land) on the Ewige Wand above Bad Goisern.
We'd intended to climb the Vöcklabrucker Pfeiler on Brunnkogel, but the late season season made the approach so difficult that we ended up on the Nordwestgrat by mistake. After a lot of confusion in the mist we decided to head back down, at which point the weather promptly cleared. A good day's hike, if not a very productive climbing day.
Clay landed in Munich and hopped on a train to Salzburg at lunchtime. The südgrat route above Schober is a prominent line rising from the Red Bull HQ at Fuschl below. A lovely choice for a sunny afternoon, with no real difficulties except for one stiff pitch of 7 up a steep finger crack on the final headwall.
Our final day of climbing on Mingulay. Clay and I abseiled into Lower Cobweb Wall, which took almost an hour due to the complex route finding issues on the final free-hanging section. Once down, we set off up Cuan a Bochan, but the final groove of the first pitch was too much for me and I fell off (a couple of times). Luckily, Clay took over and smashed his way up through this, and the even harder moves above on pitch 2. We topped out after taking about six hours to go top-to-top, very hungry and happy. A fun, challenging end to a very good week of UK trad.
