Ben Nevis

A windy and snowy start turned into a beautiful and sunny afternoon. The freezing level had dropped considerably and the snow line was well below the CIC hut.

We had aspirations for Observatory Ridge, but with three people ahead of us, and it looking a little lean on snow, we decided against it. Unfortunatly most lines in Observatory Gully require ice and this was lacking, even high up on Indicator Wall. I know Smith's was done last week but it must of been quite scary! We opted for Chimney Groove (IV,6) which took us up onto Tower Ridge and then to the top.

The snow is now well frozen, with just isolated pockets of slabby new snow.

For more photos of Ben Nevis see Sea 2 Summit Flickr site

Snow in North Wales

Yesterday I went up to Trinity Face on Snowdon with James Bruton. It has been cold since the weekend and a fair amount of snow has fallen above 600m.

We went to have a look at Snowdrop but found a breakable crust with soft snow or unfrozen turf below. Part way up the crux pitch we decided to retreat becasue of the conditions. Instead we moved around on some broken ground and looked at strength of anchors in the given snowpack.

The day before I paddled down the Croesor, with just enough water. This has some fun grade V drops on it. We also spent a bit of time removing a tree from the first IV+ drop. One bit remains but hopefully in its new location it should have a better chance of floating further downstream in high water. The recent floods have certainly deposited a lot of debris in the rivers.