Thursday, January 22, 2009

Too much of a good thing

Fox tracks on a lake, Kauhala.

Me the Corner Climb (M3-ish?), Angelniemi.

Dave leashless styling on another brutal start to an Angelniemi ice smear.

What ice climbing looks like if you are a cliff

I'm a bit behind in doing last weekend's ice climbing post - it has been a manic week. Too many promises made to many people to write things that are hard to write. C'est la vie. So it was a good weekend except I broke a crampon.

A dead Terminator

This could be something to be pissed off about, but oddly I'm not at all. Firstly it happened on the last route of the day so no climbing was missed out on. Secondly, it wasn't so catastrophic that the crampon fell off halfway up the route, so no dramatic falling off was involved. And thirdly it just makes me feel like a real 'core climber, because in the eight seasons I've had them, I've clearly done enough climbing to wear them out. In fact considering that basically crampons are designed for kicking stuff with, it is a credit to the designers and manufacturers at DMM that the things have lasted for as long as they have as I get to climb most weekends normally from November or December into March or April. That's quite a lot of kicking stuff with.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The broken crampons must be the ice-climbers equivalent of the knackered 1RP I kept after it kept me off the ground in the slate quarries years ago. My old man is a metallurgist and he spat out his coffee when I told him how far I'd fallen onto it (nearly 30ft!)
Anyway, a belated happy new year to you and yours Toby! I'm envying your cold weather as we're heading into a heatwave this week (38,39,42,37 & 35 degrees C for the rest of this week!!!)