BMC ready to rock

Having done some sport climbing, my goal was to get seriously into trad climbing. It's at this point, sometime in april this year, I saw the advert for the subsidised 'get outdoors' courses run by the BMC and of course I signed me and my girlfriend up straight away. Their venue of choice was of course the national mountain school at Plas-Y-Brenin. Well what can I say about Plas-Y-Brenin. The service was excellent and the team instructing on the course included the legendary James Mchaffie. Our instructor, Cath Bromfield, took us through the basics of building top rope and bottom rope systems, showing us from scratch how to place gear and covering everything you needed to know to confidently get out on real rock (We all left with a shopping list of gear).

Rigging Top ropes above Betws-y-Coe

The course is defiantly a great way to meet other climbers with the same goal as you, especially in the bunkhouse accommodation, where we all socialised in the common room until the early hours of the morning. At only £80 for the weekend the course was pretty good value as well, partly funded by the BMC. Interestingly the BMC have extended the scheme and you can now go on a course run by many local climbing centres, ideal for anyone that lives a long way from north wales.

Climbing a very slippy slab!

Harborough Rocks

So today I went climbing with our scout county climbing team at Harborough Rocks near Ashbourne in the Peak District. It's a limestone crag and one of only two in the country made out of the same rock as the Dolomites. My job was mainly to help rig routes for the scouts to climb, but I also jumped on some of the bottom ropes to get a few sneaky climbs in.

Having mainly climbed on grit my first thought is "this is steep" closely followed by my realisation that most of the climbing made use of quite a lot of pockets, some better than others. The weather was initially quite dismal and the rock quite slippy but it dried out and I managed to top rope up to VS 5a despite climbing in trail shoes. Harborough is a nice venue with some good climbs and a good view over Carsington Water, even though the remote atmosphere of the peak district is ruined somewhat by the works 300m from the crag.

Horseshoe (Furness) Quarry

Horseshoe quarry is a limestone sport climbing venue near Stoney Middleton in the peak district. It has recently been acquired by the BMC and has over 260 routes, making it one of the biggest venues for sport climbs in the UK. Having visited the venue 3 times, once running a university club trip there the first thing you realise is that the grade range F4-F5+ are much harder than your average indoor climbing centre. This being my first venue for climbing outdoors you soon realise how much further apart the bolts are, resulting in some scary run-outs for the uninitiate. I always maintain that the best way to start climbing outdoors is through sport climbing, as it requires not too much extra gear or knowledge from leading at your local centre.

Putting up routes on the Slabs

One issue with this venue, particularly on the easy climbs, is due to the softer nature of limestone, some of the quarry can be a little bit flakey, and in the course of my climbing, I have managed to dislodge some scarily big pieces of rock (my belayer was not pleased at all). On the plus side there is very little seepage and the quarry turns into a bit of a sun-trap, meaning that if you stick to the lower tiers there is enough shelter to turn a cold day into pleasant conditions for climbing. The resin bolts that are placed at the lower off of each route makes building anchors, either with equalised slings or two quick-draws with screw-gates attached, super easy. The size of the quarry also means that a group of 16ish people also makes very little impact as it would on traditional protected gritstone edges in the area, although the fact that someone has lead every climb you want to put up a route on, makes getting a group climbing a very slow process and a very tiring one (There were only two of us out of 16 that could lead and we had to both put up and strip the routes).

Horseshoe is a superb venue for getting out onto real rock despite the harder nature of the grades however I have since moved onto Trad climbing and find this a much more satisfying pursuit, despite horseshoe being an excellent sport climbing venue.

Going up to strip the routes

Exploring Snowdon (the back way)

This post dates back to the summer of last year, which was a particularly bad summer with regards to weather. We managed to squeeze a 2 day trip in early july and decided to explorer the flanks of Snowdon via the Llanberis pass. I've long since given up on purely walking in the mountains as i'm looking for something a bit more adrenaline filled so the route we chose followed a mountain stream, with a decent grade 1/2 scramble section and then up onto the crib goch ridge for a descent down the pyg track.

The start of the scramble

Despite the good weather and the quality of the route, there wasn't a soul in sight for most of the day. The various streams and steep nature of this side of Snowdon mean that there are multiple options for a satisfying day out in the mountains, the scrambling is around the grade one mark with a couple of grade 2 moves thrown in to the mix, meaning a rope may be appreciated, however the scrambling itself is rather short-lived considering the length of the walk-in.

Phil appreciating the rope on the crux move

Despite the short scramble sections, combined with the crib goch ridge this makes an excellent mountain day which takes in a classic route, as well as the satisfaction of getting away from the crowds of ill prepared tourists that tend to swarm to snowdon on good days.

A sneaky photo opportunity on Crib Goch

Scout Hillwalking Permit Assessment

So this post really dates back to November '11 when I went for my scout hillwalking permit assesment. We stayed at the Scout centre at Cornel in Snowdonia national park and the aim of the weekend was to put us through our paces. Much to dismay I arrived late on the friday night to find that the beds were terrible and a bad nights sleep left me wishing for my therm-a-rest. A bad nights sleep certainly put me on the back foot for the next day especial as the micro nav we were doing in the local area involved walking through knee deep heather which left me completely drained.


The second part of the exercise involved night nav and we rewarded with spectacular views across the Glyderau with some of the best weather I had ever experienced up to that point in snowdonia. I looked over enviously to Tryfan and wished I was doing something a bit more adrenaline filled than micro nav (I find it the most tedious thing ever).

The sunday involved much of the same kind of assessments, but I felt that my bad day on the saturday counted heavily against me, I guess I now understand why mountain leader assessment is five days long. The way the scout permit system works is that a permit is divided into terrain's. Terrain 1 is 500m-800m and terrain 2 is 800m+ however you are also awarded a lead only or a supervise permit. Although I admit my performance on the day was poor, we were also asked to include hillwalking logs and I was a bit dismayed to find a person with no hillwalking experience had managed to gain a much higher permit than me who had done a fair few years walking. Surely a system that allows this is flawed?

Mountain Bivi

A couple of years ago I went on a trip to snowdonia, which involved an attempt at doing the welsh 3000’s. I decided to take a bivi bag instead of the usual tent. My setup consisted of a RAB alpine bivi (600g) and a tarpaulin made by confederate tarps (250g), based in the south of America, bringing the total weight to 850g.

The first night it hammered it down and the wind made the tarp almost impossible to set up. The use of the tarp with just walking poles made it much harder to find a suitable pitch than if I had used a traditional tent and the lack of rigging points added to this problem. At 850g and a cost of about £300 the setup is far from the lightest or cheapest camping setup and for around the same cost you could get a terra nova laser competition which weighs in at 960g.the extra 110g is definitely worth it for the extra comfort and convenience and I have a feeling I wont be taking a bivi and tarp on a mountain anytime soon.

Mountain Equipment Morpheus Review

Well Its my first ever review and I may as well make it an important piece of kit!


After talking to a friend that works at cotswold about waterproofs I decided to move away from the berghaus Rg1 that had got me through my Dofe gold and splash out on gore-tex products. The morpheus was a perfect choice with all the features I wanted at a low weight and is also towards the cheaper end of the mountain equipment range. The first thing I noticed was the fabric.. compared to gore-tex pro shell ascender the pro shell ascender II fabric feels much more substantial and durable, a definate plus with the punishment my jackets go through. It now feels much more like a mountain hardshell while retaining the lightweight properties that made the jacket one of the most popular hard shells in the mountain equipment range.

The other massive upgrade for me was the hood… A wire hood that is fully adjustable is essential on the mountains, especially in high winds and this is where the jacket excels. so far it has worked perfectly on its own or combined with both climbing and skiing helmets. However the two draw cords to pull the hood in tighter have adjusts sewn into the jacket which makes the hood quite hard to adjust and are less effective, but it also means they are impossible to lose! The quality and attention to detail on this jacket is suberb. little details like the name printed into the collar, the velcro in the shape of the mountain equipment logo and the use of tape that matches the colour of the material gives the morpheus the look and feel of a well designed, quality mountain waterproof.

On opening the napoleon chest pocket a note falls out informing the buyer that the pockets are not waterproof, however the pockets are are lined with gore-tex ensuring you stay dry, which is often overlooked by many manufacturers however if you are not careful it can lead to the pockets filling with water (one of my phones died this way). Another small gripe is that the zips, especially on the chest pocket are difficult to do up properly as the slot into little sleeves to help keep the water out and this task is made almost impossible when gloves are used as well.

The cut of the jacket is excellent, keeping you dry while not restricting movement even when worn while attempting some quite technically challenging scrambles and after almost two years of extensive use the jacket shows little sign of wear apart from the tab that the hood is attached to when rolled up is starting to come of. although this could be fixed quite easily through use of duct tape and lets face it, when do you ever need to role the hood up?!

Much to my dismay during my Scottish winter trip this February the jacket started to leak. Two years of hard use had taken its toll but I sent it back to Mountain Equipment anyway, who replaced it free of charge with a brand new jacket... Now thats what I call customer service and its something to keep in mind when choosing your next jacket.