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Posts from February 2012
February 25, 2012
Stanage Edge stroll
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February 23, 2012
Cherry Ghost - Diamond In The Grind
Friday February 17 - Cherry Ghost at The Wardrobe, Leeds
It's been 5 times of seeing Cherry Ghost. I never tire of these songs.
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February 19, 2012
February 18, 2012
Fun, fear and a big freeze ...
Saturday/Sunday February 4 & 5 2012 - Helvellyn and Blencathra
What do you do for a joint birthday celebration when you hit the big five oh and your daughter makes 18 on the same day? Slap up party in a bar? City break in Europe? Pity my Sal, because her dad chooses a shared rugged outdoor experience to mark our landmark numbers. So 3 weeks later we’re in the Lake District on a course entitled ‘Winter Skills For The Hills’. And we're blessed with the most perfect weather imaginable for learning how to survive potential dangers like avalanche (more common in the UK than you might think), slips in precarious places and potential death slides down steep snowy slopes. We are blissfully unaware of the chaos the weather is creating everywhere else. Apart from news reaching the hostel we're based at that a bus has slid off the road and hit a local pub.
Day 1 sees us learning proper use of crampons and ice axes for moving safely through severely hazardous terrain. Lunch is a hasty affair, precariously perched on the side of Helvellyn in a tiny nylon survival shelter … the only possible way to remain stationary for 15 minutes without going hypothermic. There’s me, Sal, an army intelligence officer called Ian and Paddy, the course leader, sharing body heat over a sandwich & hot drink and the experience is brilliant. The summit of Helvellyn is harsh, with visibility in the whipping snow down to 15 metres at best, and picking our way back down Swirrel Edge is fun for me, though terrifying in parts for Sal. By close of play we’ve learned what kinds of snow behave in what kinds of way and we can have a good stab at predicting avalanche risk for any location using only a map and recent weather information. It’s all brought into sharp focus by news that a party of climbers, led by one of Paddy’s colleagues, have that very afternoon been avalanched off the mountain. They’ve fallen 20 metres and had to abseil down, rather than top out, thanks to ’wind slab’ or ’spindrift’ taking half their equipment with it. This is real life cementing the theory we’re learning. After the afternoon we’ve had up there, I have a more profound respect for these conditions than ever before.
Day 2 is more fun, involving as it does being shoved by Paddy down a snowy slope on the lower slopes of Blencathra and learning how to ‘self arrest’ with an ice axe. Inelegant as my technique turns out to be, I am thrilled to find I really can save myself from an uncontrolled descent using his instructions. It’s knowledge I’m glad to have later when he leads us up a 55 degree slope of firm snow, hundreds of feet up, to reach the summit. I have never felt more exposed in one way, yet more confident in another as we kick footholds in the snow and haul ourselves up on a firmly planted axe shaft for each step. Exhausted as I am … and slower than Paddy and Ian by a factor of about 70% by this stage … I can’t help feeling just a tiny bit more accomplished than the people who have come up one of the more traditional footpaths.
I decided to do this course after the stern warnings from the ranger at the foot of Cairngorm last month that I wasn't equipped for the terrain or conditions I had in mind. The company is Summitreks and I recommend the course for anyone who wants to indulge their love of the mountains all year round. If you're a 4 season walker it could genuinely save your life.
Day 1 - Helvellyn
Day 2 - Blencathra
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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Cockpit, Leeds, Monday January 30
It's taken a long while to catch them live, but at last I have. And they're just as good as I'd hoped. You can keep your Coldplays and other artists who make their fortunes through 'fans' who buy about 3 CDs a year. Being in a room full of people enraptured by a band like this is where it's at for me.
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February 15, 2012
Winter-on-Sea
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February 13, 2012
Helmsley ... celebrating my half century
Saturday January 14 - a walk just north of Helmsley
I'm 50 years and 1 day old. But the pill is greatly sweetened by being on the surprise birthday treat of a weekend break at the Black Swan hotel, in Helmsley, North Yorkshire. Our celebrations are blessed with perfect weather and the only brief fly in the ointment turns out to be a bunch of trigger-happy hunters. They spoil our lunch break somewhat by shooting into the trees we're sitting under so we're showered with shot intended for the hapless local pheasants. But it would take a lot more than that to spoil a perfect day like this.
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Winter afternoon strolling
Thursday January 5 - strolling north of Levens, Cumbria
After days of rain it feels good to step out into a classic winter sunshine afternoon, complete with near full moon. Just a few lovely hours of random strolling and just what days like this are made for. The Lyth Valley floor glitters with receding flood water. And the views across to Whitbarrow in the west and, further toward the north, The Old Man of Coniston, Great Gable and Scafell Pike are an inspiration for future days.
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February 12, 2012
Cairngorm and a lesson learned
Monday January 2 2012 - Cairngorm
My plan is to ascend Cairngorm a day ahead of the forecast high winds. It seems a good idea since the Mountain Weather Information Service predicts wind here tomorrow that will make walking "impossible", with gusting to 130 mph. There's quite a bit of fresh snow and it looks like more may be due. I've read about the hazards - especially where snow cornices form near the edges of the summit plateau - I've got a map, compass, 2 GPS units and my crampons. I have all my emergency survival kit. I think I'm well prepared. The ranger I check in with at the start thinks otherwise. No ice axe. He strongly advises me to stay low and not attempt the summit. Reluctantly I decide to take his advice and set off into the snow, resigned to just absorbing the mood of the mountains and the wintry conditions for a few hours. It takes about 30 minutes to realise going high today would be out of the question. The wind is whipping up the powdery snow and savagely lashing my face to the extent that I simply cannot lift my head with my eyes open. Even without the stern warnings of the ranger my appetite for getting up to the full 4,084 feet has diminished to zero. Everyone I meet is bailing off the mountain except one party of Germans who seem intent on going all the way without even a map. I tell them not to go any higher and, about 100 metres further on, they too turn back. At times it's a near whiteout. I realise how disorientated you could get in these conditions, if your GPS signal is blocked by thick snowfall. A couple of hours in these conditions without goggles is more than enough for me and I'm content with a simple 'there & back' wander totalling no more than 4 miles.
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