York Alpine Club Blog

As conditions in the Lakes sounded awesome Rob and I headed out for a spot of winter climbing. We set our alarm clocks early and motored off to Seathwaite and a 'quick' amble up to Great End.

Arriving at the base of the crag around midday, we found a couple of other groups were on our plan A route – Central Gully (Grade II/III) – but decided to give it a go anyway. Even from the base the route looked to be in good condition so off we went soloing up to the amphitheatre. The ice on Left Hand route looked awesome, unfortunately the queue didn't! However, we joined the groups waiting to ascend and killed a little time having food, cups of tea, and chatting with the other groups (all of who seemed to have woken up at 4:00 am and trekked across from Northumberland – talk about hard core), while the ice cleared. When our turn came Rob lead the pitch in excellent style , I followed and the ice seemed solid. A quick ascent to a seat belay, followed by a further easy pitch, saw us to the summit of Great End.

The views from the top was fantastic and allowed us to see, just about, all of the major fells in Lakeland. A chilly wind and time ticking away necessitated a quick scamper down Cust's Gully (Grade I), an awkward chockstone in the middle of the down climb was negotiated by wriggling underneath on our bellies, thankfully Rob was waiting at the other side to capture the ignominious climbing manoeuvre.

Finally, we descend back to Seathwaite ending my first day of winter climbing on a graded route.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2012 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Climbing, Mountaineering, Winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.