Gwilym's Adventure Blog

With high winds and rain forecast up high, I headed into Glen Nevis with Ben and Robin to look at some ropework and mountaineering skills on The Gutter (Diff) and some other simple mountaineering ground. This has set us up well for whatever adventure we can get on tomorrow Working for Wet and High Adventures Ltd

With summer in full swing in the Cairngorms, today we looked at Mountaineering skills and Tim and Ben took themselves up Fiacaill Ridge with me coaching along the way looking at all things mountaineering including taking coils, direct belays, pitching, moving together, using spike and thread runners and generally trying to move quickly and efficiently. Tim even managed to use his ice axe (but only to get a nut out so it doesn't count as winter). Wet and High Adventures Winter Climbing course Both Ben and Tim are up in Scotland for another 10 days so they elected to postpone the rest of the course for a week to see if winter returns. Lets hope it does.

The last 3 days have been spent mentoring Alex as he is preparing for his Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor  assessment. Alex taught Ben amd Dan climbing skills on Idwal Slabs and Milestone Butress. We then practised rescues on Tryfan Bach followed by a damp scrambling day on Idwal Butress and Continuation This is very much a two way process where both I as the mentor and Alex as the mentee get some benefits. I learnt a new route to get off Idwal Slabs and a scramble I had been up before (though I have come down it) whilst Alex got some feedback on his teaching clients. Tomorrow I will be a student myself as I have just arrived at one of my favourite locations for my own development.

Last day out with Mark and Paul, clients on a Wet and High Adventures Ltd "Winter" Skills and Mountaineering course as we decided to ignore the lack of winter and go mountaineering. A gondola ride up to Aonach Mor and a walk round to the west face so we could do the usual "is it isn't it" debate as to which rib was Golden Oldy as we stared into the mist We looked at a full range of techniques from managing ropes when walking, scrambling, moving together, pitching and general basking in the sunshine on the last half of the route. There are still a few snow patches around but the last picture is a little mis-representative as this is merely a 10 metre wide patch around the rim, the rest of the plateau is unfrozen turf and exposed rock. As always, there was the matter of managing the timing of the day so we didn't miss the gondola down for coffee and cake.

Me going up  Having a rest Me in descent After a decent evening meal and a night in the Rothornhutte , we were woken up at 04:00 for breakfast (well a fairly pathetic breakfast to be honest) and started heading up. We had a snow plod, a scramble up a ridge and a glacier crossing before we arrived at the base of the Rothorngrat route on the Zinal Rothorn . The first half of the route was easy and we soloed along. Unfortunately I was not as acclimatised as I would have hoped for and I started suffering at around 3800m so Rick did a good job of getting us moving together on a rope for the final 200m of climbing. Even though I was feeling rough it was a very good route. We than endured a total of 2600m of descent with a 20 min break at both the Rothornhutte and and Trift Hotel before arriving back in Zermat at 7pm

Today I walked into Corie an T'Sneachda with Giles who I booked for a day of CPD to look at different ways of approaching and descending from climbs with clients rather than just short roping. We started with some planning over coffee and then looked at various ideas in the corie before a debrief over coffee. I now have some ideas to play with over the next week to so to see what systems I prefer. In the last hour of the day the wind picked up and is moving snow around again but generally the conditions look good for climbing and it was quieter than I expected in there.

With both the avalanche forecast and the weather forecast being on the bad side of not very nice, we all headed in Glen Nevis and the Poldubh Crags to look a trope management and teaching leading. Although not on snow, the techniques are the same and it was good to get slick rope work straight in my mind as having not done much this year (as been away diving) things had become a little rusty. It was quite wet and windy in the glen so very relieved we had not gone up high. Thanks again to Al Halewood for some good tips over the last 2 dayd