Month: April 2011

My new landlady is a Bee Keeper, and everytime she goes up to visit her hive, I only remember the classic Eddie Izzard sketch ‘I’m Covered In Bees!’. I have posted it up below so you can savour the moment, and remember you really have to want to be a bee keeper.

I also found this video of people covered in Beee’s!

Snowdon has a long history, one that started life on the bottom of the sea, the evidence of this can still be found on the summit in a layer of limestone complete with marine fossils. Shortly after that in geologic time the area then became a massive volcanic caldera and layer upon layer of lava and volcanic dust form the majority of the rock we see today. These layers were adrift on the surface of the Earth, set free on tectonic plates moving with imperceptible slowness.

The collision of two of these continental plates then compressed the land forcing up out of the sea and towards the sky, making the upland environment we see today. This landscape was then shaped by a long period of glaciation to give the tell tale signs of the passing of an ice age.

It was Charles Darwin who on visiting the area after his return from the south seas on HMS Beagle, was one of the first to note, that the evidence of glaciation was so compounding “that a house burnt down by a fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this valley”.

Snowdon itself is a prime example of a pyramidal peak, Crib Coch a knife-edge ridge, numerous Cwm’s and Tarns show where the glaciers were born; the Lakes of Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris are textbook ribbon lakes, and the Llanberis pass a classic U shaped valley, complete with truncated spurs. There are even the striations etched into the rock by a towering glacier that ground the rocks smooth just outside Nant Peris.

What we see today, isn’t wholly ‘natural’, as despite the landscape typifying a wild and natural place, there was one more final stroke on the canvas of the Snowdon that was yet to take its mark, and was to be made by us, humans. Man’s influences goes back thousands of years to when the area was first occupied from the coast inwards, as the hunt-gatherer’s settled to become subsistence farmers they started to modify the land, through walls, fields and grazing.

These small enclosures are still evident in the area today, it wasn’t until much later that the man took on a far more destructive roll, as the mountains used to be wooded to around 600m, but a combination of man and an axe with climate change have felled all but a few remnants of the lush deciduous woodland. The Wood Sorrel found high on the mountains of the area, hiding under rocks that provide a similar environment to the shady woodland, are all that’s left in most places.

Then as civilization grew and grew man started to mine the Ore that the mountain had within it. On Snowdon this was mainly copper ore, and the extensive working can be seen above Glas Llyn which roughly translates as greeny/blue Lake below the eponymous Miners Track, and from Cwm Clogwyn D’ur Addru. Glas Llyn has that colour because of the ore rich rock that the water drains through.

Slate was also extracted from the flanks of Snowdon and historically its use as a roofing material can be traced back to Roman times, as at fort from that period on the outskirts of Caernarvon, archeologists have found traces of the old slate roofing tiles. The main slate works on Snowdon can be found above Ryhdd Ddu and in Cwm Tregellan below the Watkin Path.

This path was created by Sir Edward Watkin a then retired Liberal MP as a way to get to the top of the mountain from the end of the track that already lead to the then active slate mine, as such it is mainly easy angled but is full of the evidence of the history of the Mountain, from the disused quarry workings that are peppered with bullet holes from Commando training during WW2, to Gladstone Rock, where a the former prime minister open the path in 1892 by giving a political speech on the freedom of Wales. The Watkin Path was the first ‘officially’ designated path, and was a precursor to the opening of the hillsides that was to follow.

The first ascent of Snowdon came much early though and is attributed to Thomas Johnson in 1639, who as a botanist would have been scaling the peak to collect specimens, something that is frowned upon today. At the time he was practicing as an apothecary, so was a producing material and medicine for the developing medical profession, his practice was based in Snow hill London. Which given that the origin of the mountains name is attributed to being olde English for ‘Snow Hill’ or ‘Snow Don”, it begs the question of whether Thomas Johnson was responsible for naming the mountain?

Then of course there is the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which snakes it way from Llanberis to the summit. It was first proposed in 1869, as a new branch of the London North Western line from Caernarfon to Llanberis, sadly Lord Browning decommissioned the line from Bangor, but the end of the old line is now a lakeside track leading from Llanberis to Brynrefail through a tunnel. At the time George Assherton Smith the landowner, who was also responsible for most of the quarry workings visible from Llanberis, was worried about its negative effect on the scenery, so turn down the applications until a rival plan from Rhydd Ddu emerge. Fearing the loss of tourism to Llanberis forever he finally agree in 1894 to build the railway. If it weren’t for the foresight of this landowner, would Llanberis be the pivot around which Snowdon is often climbed?

With the mountains finally being enjoyed by the masses, the government decided after the second world war to start designating places as National Parks, Snowdonia was the third park to be established in 1951, the aim was to:
• Conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage
• Promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of National Parks by the Public
• Seek to foster the economic and social well being of local communities within the National Parks

Of course I couldn’t talk about Snowdon without mentioning the Summit Buildings, these have been here for some time. In fact there was once even more buildings on the hillside, as about 700m from the summit on the LLanberis path there is the remains old the old stables, where the horses were rested whilst those that could afford the ride up walked onto the summit.

The summit building has been re-built and renovated many times in its long history, until a few years ago it was literally a large portacabin that Prince Charles had described as the highest slum in Britain, and to be fair he wasn’t wrong. Today we have a far more contemporary design, and one that many thinks doesn’t sit easily with a mountain. However for the main part Snowdon is lost to the Honey Pot tourism of three peak events and those who want to get the highest point in England and Wales.

In spite of this, Snowdon is something of a close friend to me, in that I know its secrets, its moods and the darker sides of the mountain. It is this, the hidden mountain that I love, those magical places that few people travel, those rugged peaks that are far from the madding crowd and the places a man can stop to think.

If you have manged to get here, well done, this was a piece I started writing but having come back to it, I am not sure it really works. I do like the Snow Hill story, I found that an interesting link.

Today was goi g to be another day, scaring ourselves stupid on Main Cliff at Gogarth, the weather looked set for a nice day, but in the final approaches to Holyhead, we noticed that the Cigareete and matches were obscured in what looked like a thick mist. Fear the dreadded sea fret, we headed toward Rhoscolyn, that was looking warmer, sunnier and fret free.

No sooner than we were walking in then the misyt clear out across holyhead, still Rhoscolyn is an awesome place. So we went down and Simon hadn’t climbed the The Sun an absolutely classic E3 up a steep groove. He practically ran up it, unlikely me, where I came unstuck entering the off-width slot half way up! Nevermind, its is still early season, and I am really feeling the lack of climbing hard that I have missed out on by travelling around south america and then walking in Scotland. It is going to take a bit of a fight to get back to anywhere near the form I was on last year.

After The Sun which was bathed in a the sun, we headed round to sea cave zawn via fallen block and climbed ‘Tomorrow has been cancelled (due to lack of interest), which was my 90th route at gogarth from the old 1986 graded list. Not bad seeing as like today I have done some routes many times, so climbing 90 different routes at the crag is about 16 years of effort!

After Tomorrow… I attempted the first pitch of Mask of the Red Death, and my confidence in my ability not to get too pumped wained, so I scuttled back from the start of the hour-glass slab, and Simon finished the day by running up some left hand variant to the Little Queenie slab. A grand day out, looking forward to tomorrow, which definitely hasn’t been canceled!

This weekend was a bit of a usual for me at the moment, as I spent it working for Andy Newton, working as the second member of staff on an ML Training Course. So we did the Mountain Dsy on the Saturday and the Ropework day on the sunday. We had a great group of six, and manage to cover loads of stuff.

On the Saturday we did our Mountain Day up in Cwm Idwal, and managed to talk through lots of environmental and mountain knowledge as we edge our way into the mountains, and ascended the steep steps on Seniors ridge before picking another variation back down the mountain. We then cam back and I did a session on leadership in the mountains.

The next day and it was off to Nant peris to do the ropework, and unlike the last time when it was freezing and in the shade, today the sun has made another progress up to make it a lovely sunny experience. We covered all the ropework in the ML training syllabus, and everyone was looking good!

I have to say though as well as work I have had a great weekend, as I had a friends birthday on friday. It made me feel old that a friend that I consider to be young to actually reach 30! He’ll still be know as baby when he is forty is my bet! I also went to another friends party at Rhoscolyn, on Saturday, I was going to drive back back decided to stay, and no sooner had I decided to have that beer that puts me over the edge for driving, they all went to bed. He was 50 though, must be hard staying up at that age!

Just after I got into my tent, there was a horrible snapping sound that came from one of the poles. So after 15 years of use and abuse my terra nova ultra quasar has finally given up, or one of the poles has. I therefore have to ask if anyone has a spare set, or a tent they can lend me for a few days next week as I have to do an ML training for another company!

Anyway it was a great weekend as ever working for Andy, not to labour the point, but I have started advertising Andy’s Instructor training Courses on my SMG website.

Headed up to the sheep pen t0day, a lovely bouldering site above the Nant Ffrancon in the Ogwen Valley. Tine was short as Pete had to do some chores in the morning, and I had to be back before school finished to pick up a friends kids to babysit. So we headed straight to the main event, and despite me think I wouldn’t be able to climb out of a wet paper bag, I managed the two up lines on the right of the wall.

Whilst Pete was trying to do the massive V11 link from one end of the boulder to the other, I tried the shorter V7 link into Dog Shooter. I was gutted as I narrowly missed the top hold on a couple of attempts. It was good to get pumped and pull down hard on holds though. Pete looked as on form as ever, as the link is very tricky, at one point he seemed to be running sideways across a V8!

I am often totally amazed by the readership I seem to have managed to build up over the last few years of blogging my life and my thoughts on coaching through this portal that is the world wide web. My google analytics says that in the last month I have seen over 3000 visits and had 1600 unique visitors to my site. I also have more readers through the RSS feed.

The RSS feed may be of use to you, if you are into reading multiple blogs, as if you click on the subscribe in a reader to this blog on the top left just below the header then you will be taken to a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader. You can then add more blogs you like to that reader, and it will save you bags of time trying to visit all your favourite blogs, as they will all be waiting for you in your RSS reader.

I also happen to like the map above from my google analytics, the green countries are all the ones that people have view my blog from! Totally amazing. Whoever you are and whatever you do, please feel free to say hi by email or use the comments feature at the bottom of each post if you want to join the debate or find any of the post use or insightful. Its always nice to get feedback, or hear from friends who are way from the UK hub of llanberis!

I was attending a rescue today, and spent most of the time waiting at base because thankfully there was a Air Ambulance and RAF Seaking on Scene, that didn’t require our assistance. However over that time in base the usual casual debriefs on recent jobs led to the discussion of a recent piece in the Daily Mail that blamed iPhone and smart phone users for a 50% hike in rescues over the last few years.

I have mentioned before that if you look at this diagram below from the Ogwen Valley MRT, then you can see that there is a sudden rise in callout around the mid to late 1990’s. This incidently is the same time that mobile phones drop in both price and running costs, the so called tipping point. My guess is that most teams will see a similar pattern.

What Jame Tozer (the name says alot me thinks!) suggests is a growing number of people are now relying on a smart phone with google maps and the built in GPS, and that they are coming unstuck on the mountain because of it. Now whilst I can’t deny that this has to be hapening, as I get a growing number of clients on a whole manner of courses with smart phone with anything from google maps to memory map loaded onto them, and my experience have played with them is that they can be accurate, very accurate. However they can also be off by a few hundred metres, it is this reliability issue that is a problem, combined with battery issues.

However, on Snowdon we have probably rescued as many people with neither a map, a compass or if they had the equipment then the ability to use it was somewhat lacking. However recently we had a rescue and it was this incident that I really want to mention, as it highlights not so much the negatives, but the positives that smartphone technology is bringing to Mountain Rescue, as long as we as a team are tech savy enough to use it.

So picture a scene with low cloud, pooor visibility and two people lost somehwere on Snowdon, our usual response is to ask them where they started from and get them to describe their journey, and by piecing it together formulate a ‘best guess’ as to where they are. We then deploy the team to search these places.

I a recent rescue the party mentioned they had a smartphone so we asked if they could send us there location from the phone. We recieved a screen shot of google maps (satelite image), with a green dot marking their rough position. To confirm this the coordinator then got them to take two pictures one facing either direction on the path. With those three images their position was pinpointed, and rather than search we could direct the team straight to them.

Smartphones are a fact of life now, and yes people are going to try and get up and down a mountain with google map, even the libyan rebelion are using them to fight a well armed and perpared army, and people will get lost, batteries will run out, they won’t be able to use it properly. However there is a plus side to using them.

On the case I mention the couple had a new map and compass brought from Pen Y Pass, but unlike there smartphone they could actually use it.

Anyway I thought it made a nice counter point to Mr Tozzer’s piece, because lets be fair unless you really know how to use a Map and Compass, then even moderately poor visibility can lead to people getting lost. On mountains like Snowdon, which are swamped by hords of ill prepared hill goers that in 99% of cases make it up and down safely, it is often only the ones that don’t get away with it that end up in the firing line as irresponsible. I see ill equipped hill goers every day I am on Snowdon, so Smartphones or not some of them will still need rescuing.

Been raining again up here, althugh it is meant to dry up later, so I have been busy trying to write a few things for various people, including a piece on Snowdon, so I have been research on the interweb. Nearly went out on a rescue, but it looks like the coordinator has managed to talk the people who were lost down off the hill.

Hopefully it will brighten up again after this front goes through?!

After yesterdays battle Tom and I decided that we should have a rematch with the Far End of Main Cliff, and that we should get on Scavenger, which is supposed to be one of the classic of Gogarth, but since it is at the far end, requiring not only the walk in from South Stack but and Epic traverse across the base of Main Cliff at low tide, I had yet to climb the route.

We went with a different plan of approach today, whereby instead of taking one of the two halfs of the rope that yeasterday we neatly cut in two, instead we would take both and tie them back together. You have got to laugh at our stupidity, but it worked and the descent was a lot easier, and we arrived dry on a ledge about 8 metres away from the start of the route, and then traversed back to its base.

From below, scavenger really doesn’t look that much, main as you simply can’t see the groove line that it takes from the ground. However the short crack leads up a corner to a great belay ledge, before it heads on up and then traverse out right to the most amazing groove feature. We did some bad plannign again as the belays were in the shade, so I shivered whilst Tom lead the main pitch.

Again we headed into the twilight zone and emerged some 3 hours later into our glowering spot high on the edge of the abyss that is that far end of main cliff. Soaking up the sun, and cowering from the wind. Another great day, and having climbed the route, not only is the route classic, it is one of the best HVS’s anywhere, and if you use our approach beta from day two its relatively easy to get to, and if the tides in you could climb the first pitch of Nightride to get to the large sloping ledge at the top of the first pitch.

Derek Ryden, is an innovator and entrepreneur who has designed a couple of pieces of equipment that many climbers, mountaineers and hill walkers may well have in their rucksack or on their racks. If you don’t then maybe after reading this you’ll think again. Originally from Lancashire, Derek spent ten years in the South West of England, where he climbed extensively, and pioneered first ascents on some of the more adventurous cliffs in the area.

I first met Derek when he was lodging at a friend’s house in Llanberis, as he was designing and prototyping Reflexcell™ technology. He had managed to make a rather ‘Heath-Robinson’ construction that allowed him to manufacture some sample fabric, and the first sleeping bag. During this time his landlady was rather taken aback when he turned up at the house with an ‘adult inflatable doll’. Which in lieu of a formal assessment from a costly testing agency served as an experimental subject for measuring the rate at which the said doll would cool when filled with hot water, and comparing it’s cooling to sleeping bags of different rating. This lead to him realising that the product was incredible good at insulating his PVC friend, who was a busy girl with three working orifices, ideal for more core readings of temperature!

Eventually he set up a factory in Bethesda, and Blizzard Protection Systems was born, it is still in the same industrial estate today, but had to move to a bigger unit to allow for growth. In those early days he employed people like myself to make the bags, and I was amazed at the ingenuity, and design of the bespoke machine that welds the material together. When I first worked there the controls were manual, and there was as much waste as actual material made, in part due to my inability to follow a repetitive pattern! Whilst the material manufacturing is now automated, turning that into a bag, blanket or jacket is still a hands-on affair.

I haven’t been to the factory in years, but a few years ago the innovation went into overdrive, after it was tested by the US military, in the pre-hospital life support manual in the US military, it reads, “…after life-threatening injuries are addressed…. the casualty should be placed in a Blizzard Survival Blanket.” There is now a blanket under the seat in all US Military Vehicles, just consider that for a while, that’s a lot of blankets.

Whilst the Blizzard Blanket was the first innovation that I knew Derek for, after a while he let slip that he was the mind behind the Wild Country Ropeman. Something that many climbers have on their rack for those just in case moments, as it was the first mechanical ascender that was about the same size and weight of a prussic!

After putting a few posts up on the history of science and innovation in climbing, I thought that it would be interesting to try and get and interview from Derek on what inspired him to conceptualise, design and then build these great innovations. Here is that interview.

How did you come up with the idea for a ropeman?

Before I moved to Wales I remember staying at a house in Clwt y Bont, looking at an old Petzl ascender and noticing the elongated holes near the top. I realised that if you put the krab through two holes, it would encircle the rope, and that if you could make the krab move in the right way, you could actually make it trap the rope to give a very simple ascender. I came up with two designs which did this successfully – one was the Ropeman, the other was identical to the Tibloc. I didn’t think there would be a market for both of them, and eventually plumped on the Ropeman because I thought it was the better device. I think Petzl came up with their design independently, but now I really wish I’d patented it myself when I had the chance.

Where did the inspiration come from for Blizzard Reflexcell™ Technology?

When you pack a regular sleeping bag, you are actually squashing the insulating layer and making it thinner. When you unpack the bag, you are then asking this material to bounce back to its original thickness. This is a tall order – there are only a few materials which will do it, and the best, goose down, doesn’t work at all when it’s wet. Anyway, I figured that if you could have a material which could be compressed in a controlled way, like a concertina, then you could get a highly insulating product which would pack down incredibly small. The first attempts weren’t so good. I tried an early prototype on a bivvy on Dartmoor in a snow storm, and it slowly disintegrated as the night wore on, until at about 4am I sacked it off and went home. The breakthrough came when I added the elastic. That was actually an accident – I was trying to use it to generate a type of lumpy, “egg box” shaped sheet, but I suddenly realised it was the solution I had been looking for as it keeps the cells inflated and gives the material its “body”.

How long did it take for Blizzard products to take off?

I first met my fiancé about a year after we started Blizzard, and I told her that it would take another two years to get the business on its feet so that I could spend more time with her. I really believed it, but it’s actually taken a total of eleven years to get to that stage. The company was on very shaky ground for the first four years – until the US military started buying the blankets – the outdoor market alone just isn’t big enough to sustain the company.

How have you approached the design process for all your innovations?

I have the sort of brain that can’t help trying to solve mechanical problems all the time – sometimes it drives me nuts. But having ideas which solve a problem is not always the hardest part. One of the difficult things about being an inventor is recognising the crap ideas early on, before you’ve wasted a lot of time on them. Not everyone is able to do this (which is partly why inventors have a reputation for being mad). Having a good grounding in basic physics and mechanics is really important. But designing climbing gear is incredibly satisfying – really elegant designs make every component do more than one job to save weight – the krab in the Ropeman closes the device; it also provides the bearing surface for the rope – and it’s not even a part of the device itself.

Where will things go next?

Attempts to predict the future of technology usually fail. The trend towards lightness is already reaching the limits, so there probably won’t be any really big changes there. New materials will make a huge difference – look at what nylon and aerospace alloys have done for rock-climbing; changes like that are very hard to predict, but there will surely be more of them. It’s tempting to suggest that electronics might make the cross-over into protection devices (for example to sense acceleration or velocity of the rope or the climber – think air-bags) but my bet is that this won’t happen due to cost (relatively low volumes) and unreliability in such a harsh environment.

What’s Next?

Well I’m working on re-releasing “Slugs”, which were a curved slide nut, and were actually my first invention back in the 80s. I’m thinking of making them myself, for limited release. I’ve been working on the perfect belay device for about twenty years now, going round and round in circles, but I think I’ve finally got a pretty good design. The problem is that more complicated devices like that take far more time and resources to develop than something relatively simple like the Ropeman. Petzl have a whole bunch of people working on things like that full-time, but when you’re basically doing it as a hobby, it’s really hard to find the time. Anyway, watch this space – it will be light, semi-automatic, lockable for abseiling and rescue, and work on two ropes independently……. I’m working on a couple of other ideas, but these are not to do with climbing. I’m also having a great time learning the Saxophone, and I’m getting married in June!

Well, I have to say a massive thank you to Derek, and I really enjoyed reading through that before I put it up online, and I found out you design another piece of kit I have heard of!#mce_temp_url#

I have to say that the Blizzard bag is something that sits in the bottom of my rucksack along with my first aid kit whatever I am doing, whether its climbing, out with the Mountain Rescue team or working as a Mountain Leader the Blizzard bag is such an amazing piece of kit compared to the traditional orange plastic bivy bag. I know a lot of people avoid that added cost of a Blizzard Bag, but having the knowledge that you have a 2 season sleeping bag in my rucksack at all times is great, and not that Derek wants to here it, but I have had the same one for about five or more years now!