| hello.
as you have by now grasped, my blog has moved from
the blogspot address (where entries previous to
september 07 are archived). click the link
above for "blog" if you want to have a
look at the older posts.
back to the
present time! i have just got back from my
second winter trip, and had a great time - combining
the splendidness of avoiding work for a week with
skiing and climbing in some of the most beautiful
and barren landscape available to those so inclined.
the first few days
were spent in and around the base, since good
weather including good visibility and contrast, and
lowish winds are required to travel in linked
formation. the latter half of the week myself
and roger (see blog link) spent camping below a
mountain called trident which is quite close to
where i camped during my last trip. here are
some photos and descriptions to show something of
the week...
here's roger at
the top of my first technical "mixed"
climb, so-called because it is partly ice-climbing
(i.e. you're using 2 ice axes and crampons and
hoping for a bit of ice in the corners to thwack
into), and partly rock climbing since you're pulling
up on rock most of the time. this was pretty
exciting for me since it's pretty much a first for
me, and it wasn't an easy route (grade 4 to anyone
that knows what that means). i fell off twice
due to poor technique and almost pulled a few large
boulders down on me but enjoyed the adrenalin
nonetheless. the route is on a little nunatak,
kind of a continuation of reptile ridge after it
re-emerges from the glacier - it is close to base
and within our technical travel limits so we could
beat the weather in that respect. afterwards
we headed back to cyril's cooking which is never a
bad thing, and immensely preferable to field
rations. said rations are described as
"manfood", a throwback to the days when
dogs and men had food rations in similar boxes... 
the
next day was also too windy and lacking in contrast
to allow glacier travel so we pottered around, did
some ice climbing practice on the ice cliffs we have
at our convenient disposal behind the hangar, less
than 1km from the coffee machine. here's a pic
of roger sorting out some gear whilst shunning the
wind with a down-filled jacket. the sea is
frozen thick behind him, locking in unfortunate
icebergs: 
the
weather improved enough on the wednesday to allow us
to get out and camp near trident, all hope of
getting through the treacherous macallum's pass to
the other side of the island evaporated by this
time. the camp was very close to where i
stayed on my previous trip. so
we went climbing on the back (north) of trident, an
area of rock called hangover buttress after a
headache suffered by one of the first groups to
document the area, earlier this year. the
route was called, (enticingly) "rancid" -
here's roger near the top of the snow slope that led
up to the climb. then the sun came out, and it
was really beautiful... 
here's
roughly the route up the face: 
the
next day we did some climbing on a nearby mountain,
about 10km to the east, called n2 after a surveyor's
point, round the back of the hill as seen in this
photo, which shows the snow slope we came down
afterwards - the other side is much more impressive,
since the glacier level is much lower to there's a
lot more mountain exposed. we did a route
called 6 o'clock storm, for unknown reasons, most
likely linked to a storm which arrived sometime
around 6 o'clock... it was pretty cold and i
didn't take many pics that day. here's n2: 
the
next day we made an attempt to ski 2 slopes close to
previous day's climbs - the one that we walked down
after "rancid", and the one we abseiled
and walked down after the n2 climb (see
above)... here's a nice pic of the route on
trident after we'd done it: 
all
in all a cracking week of getting out onto hills.
and some stunning views - i've got some panoramas in
the pipeline which i'll post when they come
out. here's a few more photos. not as
photogenic a trip as last one but still very
beautiful and more satisfying... 
that's
all for
now..............
rob |
