Life at the end of a rope: First ice of the season (for me at least)

The picture above should be a regular view for any weekend warrior*. It's the sunday night view of a untidy car boot full of gear. It's a view I'm used to as well, as well as the sunday night sorting and drying of gear from a weekend away. Sunday night is never an easy night.

This weekend was my first ice of the season. I know it's not the first ice of the year and routes have been done on the Ben and in Wales for the last few weeks but it was my first ice of the year. The problem with being a weekend warrior is that there are so many other weekend warriors who'll be out at the weekend. Normally this isn't a problem but with a week of winter climbing and good reports coming in about North Wales and Idwal in particular being in condition it already looked like I'd need to book and ticket to get on some ice.

However I did have one idea...

I floated the idea of walking in to Idwal on the friday night with Holloway, my climbing partner for the weekend. I contacted him last week after a walking around Idwal and seeing that everything would be in condition soon. I didn't expect him to actaully agree with my plan, let alone think it was a good idea! He did though and I spent all week packing and repacking trying to make my bag lighter whilst taking the maximum amount of stuff with me. Personally I packed a little on the heavier side taking a little more food and kit with me on the understanding it would be better to get a warm night and leave things cached in our bivi for the night while we climbed.

Things started off interestingly. I managed to pick him up from Stoke (making it there in record time during the rushhour!) only to them side the car off the road and into some snow abotu 500 metres from his house. After pushing it out we managed to get to Idwal with no other problems arriving at the grand time of 10pm... it was warm.

Ok well it wasn't warm, but it wasn't exactly the coldest temperatures I was hoping for. As we walked in I actually thought it was going to rain at one point! It didn't but we had a load of snow and mizzle** before we reached our spot for the night. We actually bivied somewhere I'd scoped out the week before in the boulderfield that flows out from beneath devils kitchen. It's a simple overhanging rock with a little bit of a wall built around it. There was another spot we could have bivied, but it was literally a small cave that I'd not looked into properly. When I arrived I noticed that we already had "guests" sheltering under our rock but never fear for I snowballed the goats till they ran out. They came back later but more snowballs seemed to sort that problem out.

As I said I wasn't as cold as I was hoping for, not that I was looking forward to a night my sleeping bags as it was, but it was actually star to get a little damp rather than frozen and icey. I still put the kettle on and melted a load of icicles for my evening brew before settling down in my 2 decathlon sleeping bags and trying to find somewhere to lie without a rock sticking in part of me. The actual night itself wasn't so bad and I only woke up about 4 times, once however to find I'd tossed and turned so much I was out of my sleeping bag wondering why I was cold. At 6am my alarm went off and I added more icicles to my jetboil to make a brew. It was at that moment that Holloway reported a few head torches already making thier way along the side of idwal. Christ! It almost seemed like spending the night out might not get us to the ice first after all.

After speed packing I was off through the snow to get to the bottom of our route. As it was Holloways first time out climbing with me in a few years and seeing as he was so psyched for it we were heading for Idwal Stream (grade II/III ***). As it's a classic route and on Baggy's blog he reported it in the best conditions he'd seen it in for years I knew that there would be masses of people heading for it. I know it's not all about getting there first, but I wanted to be there so we had some time to do the route without the pressure of the another team behind us.

As it happened as we geared up another team joined us at the base, 2 lads called Pete and Tim. We ended up climbing in parallel for most of the route and got chatting to them. They'd both packed in thier jobs to climb ice all winter, which was pretty cool but they seemed to already be uncertain about the future. They'd not got as much winter experience as our team, but they were swapping leads as aposed to block leading so they moved a bit quicker, but it was nice to have another party to climb with.

Crag congestion... and this is at 0730

As I said I took most of the technical pitches of climbing, but Idwal Stream is a broken route. It's escapable (if you need to) but also not a series of technical pitches one after the other. There was some easy ground and a good stance after each pitch which suited us fine. I took the inital groove and climbed parallel to Tim which was probably the hardest pitch on the route (certainly the steepest) and started off with some thin ice so it was a while before I got a good ice screw in. I climbed leashless with my modified DMM fly's which worked fine as normal, but I didn't use the lanyard and just relied on not dropping a tool.

Pitch one was fine. I took me the whole pitch to get used to climbing ice again and making usre than everything was placed in the ice properly and securely. We walked the next slope and rebelayed at the base of the next cascade. This was long but less steep and had been drfrosting a little more. Instead of front pointing my way up I was able to take adventage of various ledges and step al left behind from previous parties, whislt avoiding the water spraying out. Infact the most technical part was the top out as I tried to keep my feet on ice and not scraping on rock. At this stance I used the one and only piece of rock gear on the whole route despite the fact that I've brought what was a sizeable mixed rack up with me. I guess it's better to have it and not need it etc.

Sadly out of focus

Holloway was climbing pretty well and as a team we seemed to be moving pretty quickly. The next pitch was the longest pitch I lead, almost 60 metres but in all fairness the difficulities were short lived. The first 20 metres of the route was another iced up groove before a difficult step up and right to easier ground thenit was a semi-snow/ice gully till I found something good to belay off (a load of good ice). Moving quickly over such ground was a absolute joy. Then came the final pitch of real ice. This was a 10 metre cascade with really only a little bit of difficulity on it after topping out and bringing up Holloway we dropped the ropes and coiled them got rid of any other gear for the final gully. This was easy ground which we covered leisurely enjoying being out. The weather wasn't exactly like the met office and MWIS had predicted. It was more overcast and now snowing rather than clear skies.

Eventually we could leave the gully and head off right to fine the descend down the track that would lead us back to our bags. We had planned to do some more climbing but walking down we saw that the cues had formed and it seem a long wait before we could get on the screen or the ramp. Instead we consoled ourself with a brew back at the bivi and then the joy of repacking the bags, before a gentle walk out. It actually even stopped snowing for us on the walk out too.

All in all I don't think thats bad for my first ice route of the season and coupled with walking in the night before and sleeping out it turned it into a proper adventure. I was considering new axes (nomics or quarks) but after this weekend I decided that there's nothing wrong with my flys at the grade I'm climbing. I'd still say go leashless thought. Holloway decided that he hates his leashes with a passion. It seems like he'll be replacing them with some clipper leashes instead. And I was impressed with my sleeping bag system (a lightwieght down bag and a lightweight synthetic over the top) whic kept me warm, however I could do with some tabs so that they hold thier shape whislt I'm in them (I invariably wiggle out of one bag when sleeping).

As for sunday, well we'd bailed by Saturday night. We didn't have anywhere to stay saturday and alot of kit was wet. After checking all the weather reports we could find and Holloway contacting a friend at RAF Vally to ask what the weather was going to do it didn't look promising. As it turns out it looks like the temperature dropped again. I guess thats the winter game though, because you know if we'd stayed it would have just rained all day.