Latest news: It is getting milder. Snowdonia looks stunning with a mantle of snow but the ice is melting and there has been a full-depth avalanche in Nant Peris. Be careful if you are going winter climbing; things are on the move.14th January: Snowdonia still looks immaculate with a pure white mantle but it is getting mild and the ice is starting to change colour: if it doesn't get cold again very soon things will start to collapse. Be careful out there! See the attached Twitter column for the occasional up-to-the-minute update. Last week Martin Chester, Jon Garside and I bagged the first repeat of Maria on Gallt yr Ogof in many years I believe; see the Twitter column for a video link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa5-zSBGfHA).
13th January: As well as the fun and games on the hill, this year has already started off with progress on many fronts at a professional level. On Monday I met Andrew Friedermann of the South African Mountaineering Development & Training Trust to discuss possible ways of harmonising our qualifications between countries; this as part of my role as Chair of the UIAA Training Standards Working Group.
8th January: The big freeze shows no sign of abating. Yesterday Jon Garside from the BMC and myself were joined by John Roberts from the Snodonia National Park Authority for a fantastic ski tour over Carnedd llewellyn and into Black Ladders. Conditions were immaculate. I've posted a short video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZYUoEzDB8k
3rd January: This has been a day of very mixed emotions. Last week a friend of mine was killed winter climbing on Ben Nevis; an avalanche swept him head first into a lochan. One of his best friends, also in the avalanche, managed to dig himself out, alert the rescue team and help the search, with the result that Rupert was found quite quickly but to no avail. Another experienced climber was also swept into the same lake by the avalanche and killed. My thoughts go out to their families and also to the climber who made such a huge effort trying to save his friend. We are experiencing exceptional levels of snowfall this year and it will behave in ways that confound even the most experienced climbers' risk assessments. Take care out there.
Last night I arrived back home after a week's skiing at Passo Tonale in Italy with my family. We had a fantastic holiday and on return I discovered that perfect mixed climbing conditions had arrived on the Black Ladders, so today my old friend Paul Platt and I went up to make the third ascent of a lovely route put up last week by Adam Wainright, mainly because I was reading my son's "A" level English text "Birdsong" on the flight home and this was the name of the new line; it seemed too fortuitious a coincidence to miss out on! Such is the power of the internet that route descriptions and conditions are posted and discussed within hours of completion, often with big debates over grades. A far cry from the 1980's when we last had such good conditions - I was lucky to be part of a small group that was working by word of mouth and repeating lines that have since been ignored until the last couple of seasons. We weren't familiar enough with the two-tiered Scottish grading system, so the routes were just compared in difficulty to the classic Western Gully -at that time a notoriously hard Grade IV. Well, now Western Gully is touted at anything up to VI,7 so not surprisingly all the other grades have gone up as well! Today's route will no doubt be scrutinised since its is somewhat easier than the claimed grade of VII, 7. However its a very different experience to be pioneering in unknown territory than to be following a written description, and moreover we had exceptionally good conditions today, so I for one wouldn't like to comment on the grade.
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