Last weekend (Sunday 28th) I headed out to the Junkyards with Dena & Ian for a fairly chilled afternoon, we threw a top rope up and climbed some of the steeper lines on the curtain before doing Scottish Gully, all fairly standard stuff. With regards to conditions theres are some big shear cracks forming in the ice on the main falls, I counted 4/5 with about 6ft in between them, I don't think theres any immediate danger but its certainly showing that its late in the season. The curtain is also thinning, and theres a big hole at the bottom. The itself isn't too bad to climb on, theres a granular layer thats sitting on top of the proper stuff thats formed as a result of the freeze cycles, this in combination with the ice below actually gives quite easy placements, it goes without saying that the steeper (WI4) lines are all really hooked out. If your after leading stuff I'd be wearing as due to the quality of the ice I was wearing about placing screws, and if you do place some, especially for top-roping make sure you bury them with some snow/ice. It was over 10 degrees when we were out there in bright sunshine and screws were certainly falling victim to melting out.
On a side note we hired some gear from a place in Canmore as we were a bit short, including a pair of Black Diamond Cobras - absolutely amazing tools, probably the best I've climbed on (yes, better than the Nomics I think!).
Yesterday (Sunday 4th) I was out skiing, as the other resorts were going to be busy due tot he easter weekend we decided to check out Norquay. Its a small resort, only 5 chairs all with a mixture of runs coming off them but it was satisfying for the day, if I spent several days there in a row I would certainly get bored, its no Sunshine or Louise but considering there were probably only 50 other people there all day (Sunshine would of been in the 1000s) it made some pleasant skiing, being able to just burn down runs with nobody else on them.
When i get chance I'll try and ass some photos to this. I reckon I maybe have next weekend left for winter stuff if the weather keeps going the way it is and then I'll be packing the skis and axes up until next season.
No comments:
Post a Comment