Grey Mere’s Tale

So the van was packed with toys for a weeks play in Scotland with a pall from the Lake’s & keys hidden for him to drive to Moffat to pick me up after escaping from the family. Andy, Ellen, Frith and Alex dived into Andy’s car. We met another Andy at Southwaite Services before joining the swarm of Boxing day climbers.

Frith lead Alex and Ellen up the RH waterfall and Andy and Andy came with me up the main fall taking an almost direct line up the middle.

After creating and ice belay at 55m on a ledge Andy and Andy enjoyed the pleasures the fall has to offer.

I then dived out of the system and Andy from Penrith lead Andy from Chepstow up the top 2 pitches. It was Andy’s first time with technical axes, I solo’d one of the upper pitches with Andy Grivel prehistoric straight shafted tools and had flash backs of days gone by when ice climbing was all about hitting your knuckles, never swapping tools from hand to hand, and just basically suffering and faffing with leashes. Andy is now on his way to Needle Sports to buy a pair of Quarks!

Meanwhile Frith, Ellen and Alex where having fun on the far R line.

After a ditching the ropes and jangley bits our team solo’d the upper steps then headed back round to the base of the second step for Andy’s second day ice climbing and first lead on ice (nice one andy).

Ellen, Andy and Andy walked off the top whilst Frith Alex and myself retrieved the bags.

The RH line had a quiet moment whilst a team from Kendal (Tim and Natalie) where sorting their ropes so the only logical way for me to get back to the car was grab my fair share of the kit and solo it.

On checking the phone for the rondez vous time with my van & kit the pal had bailed so back to Kendal. It was like driving half way to Fort William and a climbing partner saying no actually I want to stay in the Lake’s. The Ben will have to wait, departure on my tod in the early hours.

Next blog will be from the North.

POSTED: 26th December 2010
BY: Dan
CATEGORIES: Staff @ Play, Winter Conditions