We were climbing on the Stockhorn on an easy sport route of a couple of pitches and when I topped out I found a group of mostly young people at the top on the ledge basically faffing around in the way climbers often do. I’d wondered why they’d been a rope draped down the route at the side for 30 minutes with no activity but no explanation seemed apparent. There were two sets of belay chains at the top, one of which they were looking vaguely like they were going to abseil down and the other one of them had clipped his belay loop to, I clipped a a screwgate to the maillon and might have belayed from it but my quick assessment of the situation gave the group about a 9 out of 10 on making the transition from fannying around to being dangerous so I dropped a sling around a less than perfect block as a backup. I’d assumed they might accidentally undo my gear by mistake.

Sure enough, just as I was about start bringing Julie up and glanced around and one of them was unscrewing my carabiner and reattaching it to another part of the chain. I asked the guy what the hell he was doing and got the glib answer it was still perfectly safe. I don’t even know why he had to use that anchor, the one next to it was perfectly OK and he wouldn’t then have been abseiling down the route we were doing narrowly missing Julie on the way down.

Which begs the question, how brainlessly stupid and reckless with other peoples safety can you possibly be? Isn’t other peoples belay gear absolutely sacrosanct? If he’d asked before touching it I could have told him to leave it alone. And was it perfectly safe? Actually it wasn’t, the chains are installed in a particular way with the maillon so there’s no extension should part of the anchor fail, it’s an unlikely event but that’s why they’re installed like that.

Sorry, no photo’s !

It’s a brisk walk up to the start from the top of the funicular railway and we’re already getting warm in the sunshine before we get onto the route. It kicks off with a short ascent followed by a traverse out to the arête. The ground is still slightly wet and our boots are a bit muddy to start with and slide on the metal and rock but soon dry on the traverse.

The route suddenly swings back to our right and takes off straight up the main face of the mountain with some dramatic exposure. Later when we ride down on the cable car some tourists catch sight of another party crossing the same section and there is a chorus of “aahs” and “wow”, it’s a dramatic postion from a distance as well.

Some slightly easier angled sections and I’m able to take a few photographs of Julie.

A final steep section just before the summit provides an enjoyable finish to the route.

From the top of the vertical sections the cable is still in place along the knife edge ridge which provides some security. When we arrive at the second summit there’s a group of school children who arrived by the cable car and foot path, I must have looked tired as one little boy offered me some of his crisps!

I’ve tried to draw on an approximation of the route we took. The ascent is just under 400m vertical and there’s 1310m of cable installed. It’s reckoned to take around 3 hours and I think we took about 2hrs 30m, good timing as we arrived just in time for lunch at the cafe at the top of the cable car.

We found time the next day to visit the Beacon indoor wall, this is amazing. Walls have altered beyond recognition since I last went to one. At the Beacon I was fascinated by a self belay device, basically a tape on an inertia reel that takes in as you climb, when you fall it releases slowly and you’re lowered to the floor. When completing the route you basically jump backwards off and it lowers you off. The next two shots are of me on it, it took me two goes before I was happy to jump off, the first time I couldn’t do it and back climbed to near the floor. It’s the weirdest thing to just let go like that but a great, great piece of kit, I’m not sure if any of the walls at home have this or not.

The Horseshoe might be the most famous circular day route in the UK, it takes in one of the most famous ridge traverses along Crib Goch. A lot of the route is scrambling on rock ridges in airy positions with some significant exposure at times and it’s not a placer to be if you get concerned by heights. Along the way you gain nearly a 1000m of height and take in the two highest mountains in Snowdonia.

I think on any list of classic European hiking routes the Snowdon Horseshoe would be right up there with anything other ranges have to offer. I was really exceptionally lucky to be able to do Tryfan and the it’s North Ridge one day followed by the extended version of the Horseshoe next in such great weather.

I’d been wearing my new boots and found them just fine, I think I need some new foot-beds in them just to lift the right heel slightly as it found a pressure point making the descents.

Above left, some views of the Snowdon Horseshoe which I’d planned to do the next day.

It’s just great weather, last year in North Wales I managed a few days in good weather but nothing like as good as this!

There was a crowd of young people on the summit enjoying the end of their climb, it’s a great mountain for groups as there’s no way really easy way up and it’s a ‘proper’ mountain challenge, all the routes need some amount of scrambling and the groups had arrived from the north ridge which is an excellent scramble.

The main choice comes to whether you want a stitched shock absorber like the Petzl or Black Diamond sets or ones with a friction device like this or the Salewa one for example. I’m not entirely happy with stitched ones, once you fall and tear through the stitching it’s good only for the bin and if you’re halfway up a VF at the time, assuming you’re able to continue, you’ve now got a non-functioning set. I think a lot of people argue that no one falls off a VF so it’s moot but I’m not much convinced by that argument, once I’ve left the ground on anything I try not to fall off

There’s a couple of Eastern European manufacturers knocking out VF sets and some of the local stores have them, they look reasonable, mostly friction devices and UIAA approved but some inferior quality around non-safety components. For example, I looked at one with the squeeze action locking carabiners and the squeeze mechanism felt flimsy, this matters I think as you end up bashing the gear around the crag.

I also felt I liked the squeeze action idea as opposed to the older twist lock and variants, a squeeze action is quicker and easier and there’s no failure case (I can detect) where the gate can be left partly open.

The other feature I liked in the Camp set is the elasticised lanyards, this really helps keep them out of way moving around and lets Camp get a half decent run of dynamic cord into the system without leaving the lanyard a metre over your head. This feature is available on other sets of course.

The only feature I saw on another set, the Petzl, was a extra loop from the harness attachment for resting that allows you to clip to a bit of gear. That looked like a good idea but I’m not sure in practice if it would be much use, it’s easier to keep a belay sling on and use that, it’s longer and I can clip to a couple of bits of gear as a rule so it’s more flexible.

Here’s Julie using the Camp rewind in France :

The plan was to park near Charmey and walk along the ridge to La Berra, it was supposed to be a very small ascent but I parked at a different alpage from the one I originally intended which added a hundred metres or so to the climb.

I can’t recall how many ants you get in an average hill like this, it’s a huge number of course and this lot were certainly pretty industrious.

It’s nice walking along this ridge, we’ve walked in from the other side before which was equally nice, this area is a particular favourite of ours, the pre-alpine scenery is fantastic and there’s a variety to the scenery you lose higher up sometimes.

Looking down to the alpage where we left the car, like a lot of the alpages they do food and drink so we stopped for a beer and bought some of their cheese and ham which we had in sandwiches while out climbing on Sunday, very good!

And a quick detour on the way home to visit the latest local “crag X” at Pont La Ville, the local alpine club section have been equipping it and someone Julie works with tipped us off to take a look. It’s a conglomerate and looks quite good, routes between 4a and 6c so far I think but no topo’, we’ll probably give it a miss until there’s a topo, it’s not ideal for beginners.

Some of the alpine flowers out on the route :

click on photograph for larger version

For safety I prefer to keep some separation on the sections of of the VF and not have two people in the same cable run, the groups in front of us didn’t seem to concerned about this and I’d have hated to have them behind us as we’d no doubt have to had words about it.

The first few metres seemed pretty simple then we rounded a corner and found these two bridges. This is great example of what a VF is all about, the actual risk in this section is about as low as the whole route gets but it doesn’t feel it as your teetering along the cables, I thought I was off both bridges more than once. Above is Julie tackling it more calmly though!

That done it’s on to the more vertical classic VF sections. I’ve got to say this VF is equipped superbly, the gear is absolutely rock solid and is obviously maintained to a high standard.

Then, just near the top, a final bridge section, this looked tricky to start with with they’d managed to tension the cables so well it was actually easy to move across.

It’s a nice little crag with a handful of routes spread through the grades although the couple of easy routes we started on were most certainly harder than the higher grade ones we finished on but that’s often the way of these places.

Counting out how many quickdraws we’ll need for the route and about to christen my new 70m x 10.2mm rope.

Cleaning one of the lines we’d done.