Gwilym's Adventure Blog

Day 2 and Mustafa and I headed back to The Morraines to look at all things snow anchors.  We dug (and tested) snow bollards, buckets seats and buried axes as well as re-visiting footwork and cutting steps. Working for Wet and High Adventures Ltd  

On Day 2 of a Wet and High Adventures Winter Climbing course, with a major thaw in progress, we choose some snow banks and spent the day looking at different snow anchors including Buckets Seats, Snow Bollards, Deadman, Buried Axe and even tried a Buried Rucksack. Ban and Tim then tested the anchors to see what a difference both size and snow quality made

On the last day of a Wet and High Adventures Ltd Winter Skills course, we headed to the relative shelter of the Ciste to look at all things steep snow. We spent the morning looking at abseiling from snow bollards, body belaying from bucket seats with a buried axe. We also had a look at how strong snow was trying to get the bollards and buried axes to fail. We manged to shear the smaller bollard but everything else held on. We then had a go at some ice axe arrest skills,  or more accurately, sliding through wet mush with snow and water getting inside all of our clothes By midday we were all wet in places where we shouldn't be from feet through to pants so with the wind picking up and the rain coming in harder we ran for the shelter of a cafe and dripped all over their floor (sorry about that)