Sunday 16 February 2014

Ice Climbing Coaching and North Buttress

It has been a tricky week with the weather and meeting the variety of aims Ambrose had.  One of those aims was to look at ice climbing and improve his technique.  The only way to do that was in the Ice Factor, so we headed there yesterday.  Ambrose said he found this an invaluable part of the week, and he showed real progression through the session, climbing his hardest line as the last route of the session.  We then spent some time refreshing belays, before doing a little bit of rock climbing and throwing in some coaching there.

Coming up the first pitch

Living the dream with a face full of spindrift
Today we finally had a nice day to wrap up the week.  We climbed an extremely easy going North Buttress IV,4***, but not before I had to put all the steps back in to the route as they had disappeared from Chris Thorns efforts yesterday.  We opted to ab after the tricky pitches to cover retreating.  This worked really well as Ambrose was feeling the efforts of the week.  Despite the great weather, there was the odd batch of spindrift to remind us we were in Scotland after all.

Getting stuck into the crux crack, that is pretty much hero snow
More Spindrift

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