Woke up 7am sharpish and packed up. Moseyed up to the car after taking a few scenic photos and had some breakfast. I refused a potato cake Matt tried to feed me, as past experiences have taught me not to accept any form of food or drink for him...
It was about a 2 hour trek up Bowfell and traversing across to the base of the Buttress, and after a quick gear sort out (very quick for me), and a bite to eat, we began up the 1st of 7 pitches. The 1st pitch was easy, but we soon came to a chimney, which gave the climb its VD grading. Theres alot of waiting around in multi-pitch climbing which resulted in getting very cold, and taking pics of the interesting bedding planes of the conglomerate which is Bowfell! All was going fine and there were a few other people on the rock too, we came to what we thought was the ‘slippery chimney’ and had allot of fun getting up it. Only to find out later that is was indeed not a VD and part of an E3 route!! We had a slight communications breakdown around and about the final pitch. By this point it had got so windy that me and Martin couldn’t hear Matt shouting to climb at the top of the pitch, so we just stood there ... and stood there ... and stood there. Eventually I moved up onto a slightly higher ledge and waited till I felt the rope tighten, and took it everything was fine and began the last pitch.
Topped out about 4.30ish and summated Bowfell before walking off the hill and making it back to the car in good time to get back in time for tea! Spent the journey home texting my dad to see if he was still alive in the cairngorms after his train had failed to arrive.
No comments:
Post a Comment