South Devon Climbing

Alastair BegleyRock Climbing Short Link

Armed with a positive forecast I made the decision to head down to South Devon for 2 days with Tom over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon we headed down to Berry Head where we climbed the classic HVS Moonraker before heading to the Dewerstone on Sunday to climb the classic Central Groove and Gideon. Moonraker is described as “One of the UK’s greatest HVSs” which is quite a statement and was always going to be hard to live up to, it is also a bit of an adventure as to approach the base of the route you have to solo a low tide traverse, which is graded around Severe. This traverse makes the route seem far more committing, as you either have to climb the route or swim out… The route was fantastic with P1 and P3 being the highlight, P1 was very steep and sustained with some fantastic exposure and P3 was an outrageously steep but amenable corner, looking down was very exciting at this point! While we were climbing we had a number of highs thanks to the fantastic climbing and wildlife keeping us company, however we did. Read the full article…

Rébuffat Route – Aiguille Du Midi

Alastair BegleyAlpinism, France Short Link

With yet another weather window of only one day we decided to head up the Aiguille du Midi cable car and climb the classic Rébuffat Route on the south face of the Aiguille du Midi. It was very bizarre being in Chamonix in the morning and an hour later rock climbing at 3800m. The descent down the arete out of the Midi was spectacular with a massive cloud inversion, with only some of the larger peaks sticking out of the cloud, during the approach to the midi and on the descent it became clear that there had been a large amount of snow in the previous days storm, this combined with the very cold air temperatures made us wonder if the route would be climbable. As we approached the climb there were two parties in front of us, but it turned out that they were backing off due to ice. We decided that it didn’t look that bad and decided to continue and have a look for ourselves, and I am so glad we did! We decided to climb the route with our boots and crampons at the bottom, with. Read the full article…

Tour Ronde North Face

Alastair BegleyAlpinism, France Short Link

We made the decision to move back to Chamonix from Saas Fee due to a better forecast combined with there being more routes in condition that we wanted to do. The first weather window we had was meant to be an afternoon and a day before a storm came in, during this weather window we decided to head to the Tour Ronde to climb it’s classic north face. We made this decision largely due to there being a strong wind forecast, so we didn’t want to be up on any exposed ridges, and the Tour Ronde was sheltered by some of the larger mountains surrounding it. During Monday afternoon the weather did not clear as expected, which meant that we were not able to take the gondola to Italy from the Aiguille du Midi. Due to this we decided to spend the night in the Cosmiques refuge and walk across the Vallée Blanche in the morning to climb the Tour Ronde, before walking back to the Aiguille du Midi cable car station (at no point did we think about driving through the tunnel to Italy). After having to wait for. Read the full article…

Panorama – Jegihorn

Alastair BegleyRock Climbing, Switzerland Short Link

After having a rest day following our ascent of the North Ridge of the Weissmies, we decided to make the most of a single day of good weather by heading to the Jegihorn to do some multi pitch sport climbing. We climbed a route called ‘Panorama’, which was a 10 pitch f5a. After a quick walk up to the crag we were pleased to find out that no one else was aiming for our route, everyone else was either heading for the classic Alpendurst or the via ferrata. From the route we had a great view of the Weissmies, including the long north ridge, and the Lagginhorn. Multipitch sport climbing with two people is very efficient and we made great time up the route, finishing the 10 pitches in under 2.5 hours. The main delay at belays was having to get our breath back as climbing at altitude is hard work! The climbing was initially fairly easy and broken with lots of easier ground, but the climbing just improved with height as the rock got steeper. There were some surprisingly tricky moves at points, which were made all the more exciting by. Read the full article…