Petzl team in Scotland

With being unable to get upto the highlands at the weekend due to work commitments, i have had to make do with watching this inspiring video of the Petzl teams climbing trip to the highlands last year.
Featuring the footage of Ueli Steck climbing Andy Turners 'Secret'!


Scottish Icetrip - English from Petzl-sport on Vimeo.

West Highlands Outlook

With the aim of heading up to the highlands this weekend, all eyes are on the fickle Scottish weather, particularly where the freezing level is sitting after the recent thaw.

Well, throughout the coming week the freezing level is set to be quite erratic, pretty much heading up and down on alternate days up until Saturday. This will help climbing conditions, as the existing snow and ice will be subjected to further freeze/thaw cycles, just as long as the thaw's arn't too great.
Saturday and Sunday are set to cool down, with the freezing level predicted to sit at around the 1000m mark on Sat and the 800m mark on Sunday.

Look here for further info:

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=en&MENU=0000000000&CONT=ukuk&MODELL=gfs&MODELLTYP=1&BASE=-&VAR=hgt0&HH=150&ZOOM=0&ARCHIV=0&WMO=

8 times for Kenton Cool?

Kenton Cool and Dream Guides will be flying out to Kathmandu at the end of the month where Kenton will be guiding Everest and hopefuly breaking his own record and making the summit for a record 8th time!

Read more here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/gloucestershire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8562000/8562175.stm

Ondra - Golpe de Estado - 9b

Yesterday Adam Ondra repeated Golpe de Estado - 9b, his hardest route to date.
The route was first climbed by Chris Sharma back in 2008 but had not yet seen a repeat, well not until Ondra turned up.

http://www.climb.co.za/2010/03/adam-ondra-repeats-golpe-de-estado-9b/

Dave Macleod onsights the Tempest

Its all happening on the Tempest, with Andy Turner unlocking the route in a true ground up style, Dave Macleod has made the 4th ascent of the route. Its the 2nd ground up ascent and the first onsight as Andy had to rid the line of the rotting pegs and wires prior to his ascent.

Dave apparently like Andy got 2/3 the way up the route when he ran out of gear, Dave had spent two and a half hours on the route and then,somehow downclimbed, (not sure how you downclimb a IX,9!!) to reserve the onsight!

Read more here http://theoccasionalphotojournalist.blogspot.com/2010/03/tempest-act-3-scene1-glencoe.html

After a phone call to Andy Turner, Dave returned the next day with more gear and made the first onsight!

Andy Turner - The Tempest - Ground up

Andy Turner has recently made the first ground up ascent of the Tempest at SCnL. The Tempest was initally given the more appropriate M grade due to the nature of the ascent on pre placed wires, but now Andy has made a more natural and true ascent, he thinks the grade should sit around IX,9 0r X,9 at a push. As andy says on his blog, with any new routes and grades, the grade will settle down 'if' and when it recieves more ascents.
Read more here http://andyturnerclimbing.blogspot.com/

Elena visits Awesome Walls - Stockport

This following write up and photos was sent to me from Rene Lewis.
This weekend Rene introduced Elena, his 6 year old daughter to Awesome Walls Stockport, for her first ever taste of climbing. Looking at the pictures and video, Elena certainly has the potential as many youngsters do, its a brilliant age to introduce a youngster to the sport, as at around Elenas age kids dont think about the consequences too much, and are very agile and flexible, (well compared to me!). Its looking like Rene will soon be taking tips and techniques from Elena if they both keep at it!

Good show Elena!