Overall 2015 was a very successful year, but it certainly wasn’t without it’s ups and downs. In addition to climbing I had lots of positives in my personal life as I attended four weddings and moved in with my girlfriend.
Winter
I spent a lot of time out in the mountains in the winter and had some fantastic days but I would have liked to have done some more harder ice climbing.
My best weekend climbing was an impromptu trip to North Wales where we climbed Western Gully and El Mancho. As ever I enjoyed taking less experienced people out climbing and I really loved learning to ski tour in the Cairngorms.
My winter highlights were
- Ski Touring in the Cairngorms
- Western Gully (North Wales)
- Left Hand Branch & El Mancho (North Wales)
- Zero Gully
- Comb Gully
- Curved Ridge
- The Haston Line
- An Teallach
Summer Rock
My summer climbing got off to a fantastic start with a weekend down in Cornwall at Easter. And over the next few months I went from strength-to-strength which culminated in a fantastic weekend in Pembroke at the start of June. I was just loving climbing and progressing really well into E2. Unfortunately, after Pembroke weekend I became ill and it was the end of my hard climbing for the year. I had a few other notable weekends climbing up in North Wales and really enjoyed climbing Terminator on Lliwedd, Gogarth and A Dream of White Horses with Becky.
Limited Blog posts for summer climbing but here are a few:
Alps
After numerous changes of plans due to being messed about by the person I was meant to be going out the alps with, I ended up flying to the Alps to meet Becky and Dave. At the start of the trip we had a multi-day trip out in the Bernese Oberland which was great, but thanks to me getting altitude sickness and the weather wasn’t overly successful and the only peak we climbed was the Mönch. After this the weather completely crapped out until the last few days of the trip, and other than optimistically walking into some huts and a multi pitch sport route in the valley we didn’t achieve anything in over a week.
This all changed at the end of the trip as we got a weather window and headed over to the Salbit where we climbed the stunning Sudgrat, which was by far and away the highlight of my trip and is one of my highlights of the year.
Blog Posts:
Autumn
After the alps I wasn’t able to do much for a few months due to my illness getting worse. In September I headed to Lundy and managed to fit a few climbs in between being sea sick, being ill and the weather being crap.
After a few weeks off work and a course of antibiotics I seemed to start getting better and had a good weekend in Snowdonia in November.
As a change to the past few years I headed out to Chicago with Becky for new year with the hope of doing some ice climbing futher north. However, thanks to an unseasonably warm December nothing was in condition. Instead of ice climbing we spent a few days skiing and relaxing instead.
Photos
Comments