My winter season got off to a great start last week with a quick trip over to the Cairngorms. After arriving very early on Sunday morning, a few hours later I was back out with John McCune heading into Lochain for my first taste of Scottish winter this year. Although there was a distinct lack of […]
I’ve been back home from Scotland for just over a month now and already it feels like a lifetime ago. With the days getting longer and temperatures nudging their way upwards you’d be forgiven for thinking that summers just around the corner. Climbing in the Cairngorms For the last week of my Scottish winter trip […]
This winter I’ve spent quite a bit of time going backwards and forwards across the Irish sea, I feel like I must be turning into a familiar face on the ferry! On Saturday, after a couple of weeks at home doing a mixture of some climbing, paddling and rope access work, I was back on-board […]
Today I found myself with the horrible combination of a good weather forecast and no climbing partner! I’m heading back home on Saturday and with the weather on the turn again it was potentially my last chance at a decent day out before I leave.Forcan Ridge in Glen Shiel is a grade I/II mountaineering route. […]
Its been a bit of a busy week for me this week. I feel like I’ve been all over the place with the weather being just as varied as the locations. Monday started with a less than prefect forecast, high winds and lots of snow meant that the ski road up to the Cairngorms was […]
Since arriving in Scotland two weeks ago things have been fairly busy, with lots of personal climbing and a little bit of work thrown in for good measure.Conditions out on the crags have been hard going at times with big accumulations of snow meaning lots of digging to find gear, or long run outs. Not […]
So once again the notion has taken me to update my blog, try not to get too excited!! Since my last post I’ve been fairly busy working for various outdoor providers in some new areas around Ireland. I’ve also been spending more and more time hanging off buildings with vertical world, which has proved to […]
Today was my final day of two weeks working with Tollymore on the winter mountaineering course. For the last day we headed up into t-Sneachda to consolidate on all the new rope work skills. The corries looked like a very different place than yesterday, with the rise in temperatures dramatically striping back the snow. We had […]
Today I headed back up to Lochain with Rory, Chris and Frank on day four of their mountaineering course with Tollymore. There had been a reasonable amount of fresh snow since yesterday, which bumped the avalanche risk up a bit. Bearing this in mind we headed for the edge of the snow slope, which had […]
Today was day 3 of the winter mountaineering course for Tollymore. The guys were keen to look at rope work and pitching on not only snow, but on rocky mixed round and using some rock gear aswell. We started the day of with a rope work session back at base, this gave a good oportunity […]