Glamping, Srampacking & Solrunning.

Well I just checked in with Andy K’s Blog he and the team are currently on top of El Cap, however I won’t congratulate them until they are safely in the Bar at Yosemite Lodge, it one of those superstitious thing that I am not keen on celebrating an ascent anymore until I am safely back at the car. Recent events have made me more aware than ever that the ascent is only half the story.

Anyway I had a chat with Andy in Yosemite where he talked about Srampacking, a feature he was working on for Trail Magazine on the combination of Scrambling and Multi-day backpacking. He had a route laid out Wales for the article, I have to say I expect to have to rescue at least one party off the BillBerry Terrace on Lliwedd. It seems ironic that Trail don’t like ropes in the photos as it freaks their readers out.

I really find this funny because I don’t think I would try and unroped scramble/solo Billberry Terrace. I would imagine that it would freak most of the reader out enough to make them wish they had a rope and knew how to use it. This ain’t a criticism of Andy, as he was approached by Trail to write the piece. But it seems mighty stupid, as in Wales you just return back to the valley, camp next to the pub and get pissed. I call it Scramlashing.

Anyway, I have been listen to Fern Cotton on Radio 1 a bit when I was in the States, the joys of Satellite radio. Anyway she is big into the combination of words. So just Chillax and take in a few of the combos I have come across. The best was a friend who was going Glamping, apparently a VOGUE phrase, brought about by Kate Moss who likes to go Glamorous Camping. Now I would like to go Glamping with Kate, but I don’t think I could take her jacking up and leaving needles in the tent!

Which brings me to the Solrun, this is not a new idea, but I have been running and recently I have combined it with a bit of soloing routes. At first it was Llanberis up to Seamstress, solo seamstress, and then back home. That grew to running up the pass to solo Rib and Slab plus a few other routes, however it was way too windy to justify soloing anymore routes, having survived the first.

Now I only solo very easy routes, however I have heard rumours of James McHaffies legendary Quarry’s Solrun, I certainly won’t be repeating that circuit. However, I am keen to develop an Extreme Scrumming course, a long run with VS climbing that you move together with a rope on treating it like Extreme Scrambling. Anyway, we’ll see how that idea develops!

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