SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

I just mention that as apparently, incredibly, it’s not something we all find obvious.

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 !

We’d planned to do this for a while and Julie had a vacation today so with good weather it was ideal. Moléson are perfectly setup for all kinds of activities and seem to drain every bit of utility they can from the facilities they’ve got, it’s a real pleasure to go there and do things. I first went to Moléson as a ski station but it’s been a couple of years at least since I’ve actually ridden one of their lifts and skied down a piste, but we’ve been many times ski touring, snow shoeing, hiking and taking family sight seeing.


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I was over in North Wales for an SPA training with Phil George, despite being certain of rain it was actually great weather and we had a great couple of days. Phil is a great teacher, he’s an IFMGA guide and really knowledgeable and enthusiastic on all everything mountaineering and climbing. After the first day out me and the other two guys decided to go climbing up in Bus Stop Quarry, this is on the HVS Solstice which I think Phil did the first ascent of in the mid-eighties, my old guide has that I repeated in 1987 which sounds about right.


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I don’t think I’ve done this in it’s entirety before, I’ve certainly not done a circuit including Gallt y Wenallt although I’ve done pretty much all the sections before eith the possible exception of ascending Lliwedd. I’d met some guys from the Walking Forum as per plan and we really couldn’t have picked a better day. It started fine and sunny and some cloud rolled in later, to me that’s the best of all worlds, you get a real added atmosphere with some cloud swirling around.

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.

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