More Mountaineering

On monday we spent several hours digging bollards into a steep icy slope. The wind and snow made little crystals on my face.

We spent the next day in the woods practising knots like crazy while it snowed and snowed.  By the time morning came for our last day the landscape had been completely transformed.  I was kinda scared of the last day after seeing what it was like to walk around on slick 45 degree ice slopes on monday.  Jan was mostly worried about her feet so as we set off we both had a feeling of impending doom.

Added to this feeling was the incredibly wild landscape which we walked through for several hours to get to our climbing site.  As the morning cleared though things looked brighter.

And by the time we’d got to our climb site the sun was out and we were treated to magical veiws of the sun glowing on the snowy cliff tops.

Before we started climbing we did a little avalanche test which told us that the risk was moderately high .. and as a little additional reasurrance Ron calmly told us that this was where most avalanches generally happen.  Nice…..  Well we started to climb after some faffing with Crampons and Jan bravely volunteered to go first with me belaying her from below.  As I sat in my bucket seat I looked down and realised that should she fall Jan would be quite sure to go straight into the ice lake at the bottom no matter what I did with the rope.  I hoped she didn’t fall.

This was the beautiful ice lake into which Jan would have plunged.

We proceeded in turns to climb, dig a hole and a snow bollard and then belay our partner as they climbed higher.  It was much harder than we expected.  Mostly because of the fact that sitting immobile in -8 degree conditions while belaying tended to make you really stiff and cold.  Then when you finally got to climb you’d have to do it all with frozen hands until you got to the top and started digging with the ice axe again.  Jan suffered pretty bad from the cold.  Here’s a picture of her looking pretty miserable at the end of a long belaying session. (She later discovered that she’d done the entire climb without doing up her boots … )

Eventually we ran out of time.  We were freezing cold and actually kinda glad to pack it in and trudge home.  On the way back the light faded and I had a rather nice feeling of having packed alot into the day.  Jan was incredibly glad to say goodbye to her mountaineering boots.  Her toes testify to that.