On Matt and Anja's final weekend with us we hiked up the south side of Hochkönig on snowshoes, dug a big tunnel in the snow and then built a long slide to zoom through it at speed. Wahoooooooo! Beautiful snow shoeing in the mountains under an hour from our house.
Coaxing a very hungover Blackmore, and a rather more sprightly Anja, on a hike up Kühberg.
Our morning began on Gabriel and the Pearly Gates at Stoney Middleton. A tremendous downpour meant we beat a hasty retreat which pleased Blackmore, whose intolerance for jagerbombs the night before had turned the polished limestone from solid Type 1 fun to very sketchy Type 2 fun.
The weather soon cleared so we nipped across to Stanage for a trip up my last remaining Peak Classic Rock. Quite a contrast in rock from the morning's route!
Today at Castle Naze we did a girdle traverse. This means that rather than climb upwards for 10m on any of the normal routes, we instead traversed horizontally for most of the width of the crag. Incredibly fun but also highly antisocial! Some climbers find these routes horribly contrived, we thought it was hilarious.
In true Alastair Humphreys style we left work, went to the climbing wall for a bit, nipped home to grab three bottles of wine then headed to the hills of Burton Dassett. Seemingly the only high point in the whole of Warwickshire, we trudged up the 45m walk from the car park to bivy site and settled in for the night.
@George_Cave looks a good ratio
— Alastair Humphreys (@Al_Humphreys) July 13, 2013
Spent the morning introducing Matt to outdoor climbing at Birchen Edge. He excelled himself and followed me up some of the classic routes of the crag such as Camperdown Crawl and Topsail.
