Thursday 20 December 2007

Thin Ice. Are you brave enough?











Managed to get to Crinkle Ghyll in my lunch hour. Temperatures in the valley during the week would have made you think that water ice should be forming. -6 at night and -2 during the day. There has been an inversion but I would have expected it still to have been cold enough to form a bit of ice. I climbed 10m up one of the icefalls before deciding it was suicidal and that nobody would hear my screams of agony if I fell off so I came down before it was too late. The ice as you can see was very thin and required a very delicate touch. A rope, a bouldering mat and a rack of Bulldogs might have tempted me to go higher. I then found a bit of ice to boulder on.

Helvellyn is still giving the most wintry outing at the moment, although I think there should be good enough ice in Window Gully. Snow is forecast for Saturday and bomber turf could bring things like Bowfell Buttress into condition.
The real climbing venue for the day should have been sun rock Gimmer.

2 comments:

David Dobedoe said...

Great find your site, based in Shap myself and will take a quick look out in the morning in search of some climbable ice. I'm hoping your explorations are going to me me a few ideas in the next couple of months keep up the good work.

David Dobedoe said...

Opps I meant to say, I'm hoping your explorations are going to give me a few ideas in the next couple of months.