Climbing Partners
| Initials | Person | Routes | Height |
| MB | Martin Beale | 261 | 7919m |
| FW | Frederik Willerup | 202 | 16470m |
| TW | Tim Wilkinson | 185 | 4902m |
| FZ | Frits Ziegler | 63 | 1509m |
| KR | Kaspar Raats | 56 | 1278m |
| RS | Royston Sellman | 54 | 1531m |
| SF | Sean Franks | 50 | 17155m |
| PW | Paul Wood | 43 | 2824m |
| WW | Will Wray | 36 | 1365m |
| CW | Celine Willerup | 35 | 873m |
| JC | John Culsaw | 21 | 753m |
| DS | David Skov | 18 | 560m |
| AW | Andrew Walker | 16 | 4071m |
| DG | Dave Grosvenor | 16 | 36m |
| HW | Henriette Willerup | 15 | 605m |
| PP | Poul Henriksen | 12 | 10m |
| WISH | Wish list | 11 | 291m |
| JI | Jim Randell | 11 | 376m |
| JB | Jack Bernstein | 11 | 210m |
| AX | Axel Willerup | 10 | 1433m |
| JR | Jesper Ritzau | 10 | 189m |
| TR | Theresa Rhoades | 10 | 189m |
| RI | Rich Semple | 9 | 253m |
| VH | Vivi Hansen | 8 | 258m |
| EW | Emil Willerup | 7 | 67m |
| JG | Jean Gabriel | 7 | 160m |
| LK | Lars Klammer | 7 | 79m |
| SW | Steve Wright | 7 | 290m |
| AK | Anders Kantola | 7 | 400m |
| UH | Uffe Hogsbro | 7 | 4089m |
| AN | Anton Greiffenberg | 6 | 126m |
| VM | Vika | 6 | 303m |
| RR | Rene Rhoades | 6 | 5m |
| PD | Paola Dotti | 6 | 104m |
| LP | Jakob Lapp | 6 | 107m |
| JS | Joakim Svensker | 5 | 100m |
| SG | Soeren Lynggaard | 4 | 2m |
| CA | Chris Adam | 4 | 75m |
| KK | Kristian | 4 | 2050m |
| NE | Neil | 4 | 108m |
| RG | Ralf Grusshaber | 4 | 66m |
| AL | Al Mackenzie | 4 | 55m |
| JT | Joint Wilkinson | 4 | 57m |
| LS | Linsey Scott | 4 | 108m |
| MI | Mikkel Bulow Lehnsby | 4 | 107m |
| LW | Leon Wulff | 4 | 66m |
| OR | Ole Rasmussen | 4 | 120m |
| LA | Lasse Pedersen | 4 | 34m |
| HL | Helene Lando | 3 | 60m |
| PS | Peter Ras | 2 | 18m |
| CH | Craig Harwood | 2 | 110m |
| SL | Steve Lougrahn | 2 | 79m |
| JA | James Cromwell | 2 | 21m |
| MF | Mads Fisher-Rasmussen | 2 | 100m |
| DP | Dietrich Paulus | 2 | 60m |
| PE | Pete Internet | 2 | 75m |
| LH | Laerke Hamborg | 2 | 66m |
| SN | Sanne Wendes | 1 | 16m |
| KM | Katarina Mania | 1 | 0m |
| CL | Claire Wilkinson | 1 | 0m |
| JL | Jakob Lorentzen | 1 | 0m |
| SH | Simon Hauch | 1 | 22m |
| TB | Tom Bruntt | 1 | 2m |
| Total: | 1181 | 125040m |
Martin Beale (MB)
Our ambition for the weekend ticked.
Led the one Royston did the day before. A perfect route for rainy conditions
Excellent lead by Martin. I popped off just before the rest midway.
Last route of the weekend. Flood lit bridge climbing.
A lot more tricky than it looks. The jams are flaring and not very deep. Glad it went free.
Excellent route at the main face of Haller. First pitch requires solid worming skills - bring a Camelot 4 for the crux. Second pitch is more difficult than the guidebook suggests but it does go. Be a bit careful going across the boulder choke and make sure you find the good hand hold on the right going through the final roof. Exposed. Well worth it. Walk off the crag going all the way across the ledges to the path in the forest. Yoor!
Last route of an excellent weekend at Cloggy.
Excellent effort of Martin. It is the easiest line out of Huntsman Leap and it is by no means easy.
Despite a hangover I felt much more akin to the rock.
Good lead from Martin.
polished and therefore quite difficult
On permanent loan from Indian creek. I struggled.
Best route of the day. Friction was excellent
Excellent digging trip to dig 9. Also saw the Corkscrew Chamber which was found the day before.
A long held desire to show KU to Martin is realised. Climbed on a borrowed rack from Fred and Martin using a sling as a harness. Good climb squeezed in betimeen social engagements. Very kind of Martin to give the climb three stars.
After the cave spankotronic on Saturday I was struggling on everything. The drive to Gatwick afterwards was desperate.
13 hours spankotronic. With John Stevens
A visit to the digface in Grolsch Passage. Managed to make about 2 meters progress removing 22 trays of spoil. The whole passage is really impressive.
Not much gear
Continuing the dig. Excellent burly trip. I enjoyed being at the sharp end much more this time. We've hit a boulder section.
Did a festive speed ascent as the second.
I got pumped. Excellent sustained route.
Digging trip towards Daren. Excellent team effort hard work but good fun. Digging is not for the claustrophic amongst us.
Lovely route. Climbed 30 mins after arrival at Bristol Airport. Every airport should have a crag.
Brilliant rig. World class. The subsequent connection was an ultra burly bit of caving. I was particularly traumatised by the gravel-stream squeeze that nearly caught me on the return. Next time I will remember to turn my head the right way. Good effort from Martin leading this bit and not drowning while reversing in the sump. Double black helmet.
Highlights: sucessfull use of heyphone wading through bonzai streamway pushing to Aquenos Choke. Exit series felt hard.
Lovely climb. Make sure you don't do the direct as the traversing has some excellent moves in it. Ticked just before my plane left back to Copenhagen. Thanks Martin.
Excellent. Just excellent. I love AV.
Two-nighter into Dweebland (the end of the cave so far). Excellent trip. Flawlessly executed. We let off two smoke bombs (one failed) at the end to see if there's a draught towards Aggen Allwed. There is. Get your crowbars out!
Trip to the restaurant of the end of the universe
Excellent cave - easy in all respects (rig and walkin). Martin regained his unfire with a steady lead to the bottom. All bolts overtightened subtracts a star good photoshooting and muddy fun adds it back.
The Pot 2 attempt - Grosvenor style. Martin lead down to -80 meters. To be continued.
Tried out my new caving radios which works extremely well on these long vertical pitches.
Full on caving. Included a dangerous 25 meter pitch lead in Wellingtons with only a sling and my bolt kit (thank god for that) as protection. Fantastic cave - highly recommendable.
Desperate. Approach was as hard as ever and the amount of ice in the cave was worrying, although on the same time ultra festive. Martin fired up an inspirational ice-stal-chopping session as we were stopped but an almost complete blockage of ice in the entrace tunnel. Reaching a depth of approximately 100 meters we eventually decided that this was a black helmet danger zone. Huge television sized blocks of broken off ice was scattered around the shaft, and after a quick statistic calculation on when the next bit of ice could be coming down, we decided to blow retreat horn and hurried out after exhaustive cold caving session.
Excellent job to the bottom. The route finding to the last pitch is a bit tricky until you realize you have to gnarl your way through a hole in the roof (upwards) with the festive aid of a spit/stal sling. The squeeze to the beginning of the last pitch is not as bad as it looks - go in feet first and you can stand up half way (not imidiately obvious). Yoor!
Long trip with an overnight camp in the Hard Rock Cafe. The further speed trip to The Microns was a seriously burly piece of work. Good effort from Martin doing the car shuttle on foot both ways and for the amble lager refreshments in the Hard Rock Cafe and Royston for the very inspirering bit of cave leading in the Rock Steady Cruise.
Lateral Shaft. Superb rig avoiding most of the water of the main shaft. Mindblowing
Main Shaft. Wild decent. Although the water level was low we ended up right in the end waterfall which is serious stuff and very scary but excellent adrenalin fun at the same time. The tick is home!
Excellent sporty rig.
Fantastic trip. Made it to the Bonsai Streamway and back.
A job needed to be finished. We wanted to finish yesterdays objective of getting to Smiths Armery but the area was in flood now and we made it past the traverses into OFD3 and reached the roaring streamway which was fantastic to watch but a certain deathtrap to enter. Great trip
We did an unplanned round trip due to some tricky navigation in the Shambles. On one of the many tricky climbs Tom lobbed of and fell around three meters but luckily landed on his feet and not on one of the sharp boulders. He sprained his angle badly and we abandoned the trip and got out safely.
Walked up the Dent de Crolles. Nipped in to a huge cavity with our c-rack. Massive draft coming out of the cave. Will be back for further exploration.
Absolutely superb SRT trip. Beautiful lines and an amazing 40m drop from an overhanging speleothem. Easy and highly recommendable. Approach - 8 seconds from the car.
Long day out. 13 hours including the walk. We got back to Grenoble at 4am in the morning.
Beautiful walk-in - quite long. Descended amazing looking shaft (140 meters straight!). 10 meter down bolt ripped. Mission aborted. Glad to be alive.
Beautiful cave - lots of little lakes and excellent formations. Perfect rig as well.
Superb climbing. Undercling 4 meters up provides an easy pass of the crux.
This was to be my last lead this day. Tried a 6b/c but took a whipper before the last clip. I was pumped stupid and getting exhausted after an intense week of caving and snowboarding.
Superb day. Excellent big air jumps and some really pumping carving. Absolutely shagged afterwards also partly because of heavy drinking at the previous night with Martin, Christian Holst and forty bottles of bottles of Christians vodka
Gnarled around a bit to figure out what the best descend would be with the access to P2 being unskiable. Perfect weather and only few people
Desperate trip. Got back up to the surface at 12'o'clock at night after a long day in the darkness. Our friends in Grenoble was getting well worried and had started phoning the local police etc. Luckily they sensibly held back any rescue attempts as we were perfectly fine. Glaciere de Scary!
Excellent cave ends in a big lake which goes of in the distance. Next time we'll bring a boat and explore further. This time we both put the double amount of clothes on and was relatively warm.
Massive cave shaft - starts with a 120 meter (360ft) drop of a bridge - straight down in to the void. Desperate trip - quite wet and extremely cold.
I decided to postpone the UK underground retirement for one more trip - I couldn't say no to a trip down Manor Farm with DG and MB. I wasn't disappointed. Dave now goes under the nickname 'Mr. President' (president for the HPCC) and I had the great pleasure of pushing through some really dodgy loose bouldery bits in the far end which was rewarded with a huge chamber which almost certainly had some further continuation. Dave and Martin unfortunately didn't reach this glorious chamber as they reckoned the boulder bits were too unstable.
Ate all my Camelots. Good jamming on the left wall.
Superb texture and excellent crimps.
Severely hungover I quickly sobered up leading the easy but exposed and sparsely protected second pitch. Classic route.
Martin jammed like a savage. I laybacked.
Superb Saturday out in Wintours. Excellent routes which for me climaxed in this 135 foot hidden gem. Shame about the bolts left of the route which obscures the face a lot. Great hidden line though.
We were still alive after five routes in this Llangattock place - it *had* to be celebrated on the Hope and Anchor back in Bristol which it did.
Had the block I belayed from decided to let go while we were at it it would have been the end of it all. Great route.
Amazing fingercrack from bottom to top almost. I was getting cold and a little bit fed up after Martin had spent what seemed like two or three hours emptying his chalkbag on the 24 meters of rock.
Scary middle piece of loose shale above rp-gear lower down. Good character building stuff.
Stepped on a reasonably solid looking piece of rock which disappeared underneath my foot.
Excellent route. Quite a powerful start and the rest is reasonably bold with very spacious gear and almost complete dependency on the concretions (which Martin had just shown are not necessarily in-situ).
Martin knocked of a concreted foothold which nearly hit me. Luckily he stayed on.
Good top pitch but the middle part is seriously vegetaged - even comparing it to the other routes we did that day.
Quite a little epical excursion - at least on the sharp end. It was f*cking loose in the start and I nearly came off which would have ment a certain splat. Thing did *not* get any easier in the top. It was good climbing but the top was desperate. Gear was good but the finishing ledge was full of munge and I eventually climbed off leftwards.
Another excellent 'after work' tick. What a route! The direct start definitely places a stiff crux in the bottom which was negotiated with an amble amount of Yoor.
Excellent after work session. Although the last pitch was done in the dark we managed to get to the Rising Sun in time for a few beers. Met a few of the locals nice people.
Excellent route. Big jugs and great positions.
Festive approach. The tide was coming in and we we negotiating some semisubmersed boulderhopping.
Strange grading - I lobbed on the 5a pitch which was really akward and hard.
Superb Half of it was fun. Half of it was a running mare. Absolute savagery. Constant horizontal rain all the way through.
Good training.
Has to be the best HVS of the year. Superb climbing on fantastic rock.
Excellent sport route.
I started on this fantastic looking splitter but was lowered to the ground as the initial finger jam proved too much for my jamming skills.
Martin started our City of Rocks experience with a serious lead up to Stan's Roof. He commited himself to some marginal smearing and I can't remember having seen Martin so close to popping off as the roof didn't contain an obivous thank God Hold. Scary stuff. I on the other hand popped off in the roof section.
Brilliant fist/layback crack with exciting roof. Read the Trip Report.
Brilliantly exposed and steep followed by finger crack and layback.
Felt easier than some of the previous days - are we finally getting used to Josh rock?
Regular Route. We videoed the ascent. Come around my boat if you want to see it.
Brilliant laybacking jamming and underclinging. Thanks for the tip Royston.
Ultra Technical slab. Martin at his best.
Really technical traverse of the Baggy Point Promontory Slab. I was pretty close to not making it but eventually pulled it through.
A bold lead by Martin Beale (his first E3 lead). Read his story in here.
We camped at the bottom of Shorn Cliff and ticked four more routes the next morning before going to work at 9am. (Started climbing at 5:30am).
Great conditions. Misty, wet and not too windy. Right knee hurting. After five hours I twist my ankle badly and we decide to retire and manage to arrive at the midway campsite after an additional 3 hours struggle. Read the full story.
Disturbed an Owl with - owlings?...
We were forced to climb this route in pretty extreme conditions.
Cornwall at its best
Martin did the start - HARD
Interesting slab - windy and exposed
Superb layback
After work climbing session. Pub afterwards.
Frederik Willerup (FW)
We got to the down climbs.
Axel and Elias did the drainpipe.
Nice to get out. Dad and Fred on shore admirering my shenanigans.
Highlights: sucessfull use of heyphone wading through bonzai streamway pushing to Aquenos Choke. Exit series felt hard.
Another fun weekend of mixed climbing and scuba diving.
I had done this before. A great route an easier version of its neighbor Flagermusen equally interesting.
Superb route great exposure and a finish requirering careful thinking.
Lovely route
I love this route. It is easy but it is a real little adventure. Great positions.
A classic of this section. Nice crag climbing.
Fine crag climbing. Fred lost his camelot 2.
In celebration of Seans newborn daughter called Freja Fred and I climbed the crag of this little baby.
Fred and I tried our luck with this 11 pitch classic. Eventually backed off due to approaching storm and lacking yoor. Quite good we did. A little epic.
Spotted a potential cave at the bottom. Will require digging.
Nice little number. The finishing move is a bit gnarly.
Fred's first rig in the Vercors unmedium. The pendulum was as festive as ever and worth noting is that we managed to get up that climb in the end (fairly committing) taking us all the way to the bottom.
Did it! RR went with us for 10 meters and then decided to back out after a worm attacked her in the entrance. We'd seriously misproportioned the whole cave - the entrance crawl and chambers beyond was much bigger than expected. We forgot the map which ment we couldn't make it further than the Great Chamber
Did the full through trip. A great evening out with TW and DG - possible the last for a long time now that Fred is going back to Denmark and Mathias is going bigger voids in Grenoble.
Great route with everything. Looks imposible from below but is okay once you get commited. We wanted to do the amazing looking Sacherer Cracker afterwards went up the 5.7 Flaring crack and then it started to rain. Next time!
One pitch route right betimeen the Nose and Salathe - awesome setting.
Hidden gem. We climbed right next to Tom Frost (first ascensionist of El Cap) and called him a chicken. Truly festive guy.
Excellent crack line. Technical fingerstuff.
Incredible layback. We backed down after third pitch as it started to rain.
The Rhoades sisters had an unsettled bill in the sump of this fine system. We went all the way through Cambridge Grotto to the Red Room. Good to be back.
Oh baby! This hole had been on the ticklist for quite some time and still is! We had to turn back approx 350 meters in through the 530m crawl that guards the cave. RR had some bad equipment and was freezing and we decided to go back before it would be too late. I have the feeling we will be back - soon.
Fine trip. Dave pointed out a number of challenges which we should attempt soon.
We got as far as the 'very narrow tube' and despite Mathias' attempt of squeezing through in underpants only there was no way it would go. Good trip.
Our Cousin from Denmarks first climb. Good job!
Successfull ascent.
Our sister Henriette went to Bristol to figure out why her brothers like caving. She didn't find the answer but found out she is definitely not desperate to get underground again. Instead we went on an epic trip on the narrowboat
Excellent route! Really sustained climbing on a brilliant line. Starts with technical bridging then exposed traversing and finishing up a steep pumpy overhanging wall.
A hidden gem. Excellent rig. The line is just pure beauty.
Long walk. Long rig. Well worth it. FW rigged the hole thing.
Such an amazing hole in the ground. It was raining and there was quite a bit of water.
Great little Saturday afternoon adventure. It was/had been raining a reasonable amount and there was a sizable stream entering the cave. We managed to do a nice round trip
Excellent trip. Did a 'double' abseil simultaneously next to each other and swapped over in the bottom
Very pretty cave in the Fairy Quarry. It's normally locked so you need an official guide for this stuff. Impressive formations
Awesome trip. We did the round trip which has some extremely challenging routefinding speically on the return. We were very pleased to get out
We came in 68 of 197 teams in the C class. 69 of these retired after the first day - 128 completed. (2.200m of ascent)
We were back to complete the round trip that we had attempted with Peter three entries down. This time the mud sump that we had rushed through was filled to the roof with water and after an hour or more of pumping water with no noticeable effect we went to explore the Black Hole Series instead. This ended when we arrived at a 40 foot pitch. Good day out. We were both exhausted
We went in with Dave Grosvenor on a good trip in to the wonders of Fairy Cave. A surprisingly muddy experience. Some good technical obstacles to keep the wriggling techniques uptodate. A Grosvenor Special.
A wet experience. It was raining quite a lot but Peter wanted to climb rock so we went for it. I led it but grabbed Fred's abseil rope in the desperate wet top.
An excellent trip! We went into the St. Poul Grotto Series which included some very low crawls and passing a mud sump. Peter did well in this -not- a beginners section of the cave. We didn't manage the through trip though since Peter started having more than enough. We didn't realize that this actually was our probably one and only chance of ticking this sought after Swildons collectors piece. Bummer!
Good Trip. Theresa and Rene both did Sump 1 in freezing cold water and in a very uninviting condition. Rene even managed to become a 'Son of The Mendips' as she fell into one of the pools twice.
Excellent day out in Cheddar. Weather was perfect and we finished the day of with this little steep splitter. We gave a rope end to a chap passing us on bicycle from London on his way to Penzane.
Good route! Really good route.
The yearly 'Insult DG' trip was as festive as ever. Sparrow treated us with several muddy squeezes and a good selection of pretty formations
The route has fallen down and we did the new King Kong. Serious stuff. *Very* sustained. I reckon it's E2.
Tried a 'canyoning rappel' technique for the abseils. Worked okay but figures of eights and doubling the rope is preferable
We finally managed to get all the way in to the 'letterbox' - the furthest end of the classic cave. The letterbox is an extremely tight squeeze section very awkward specially on the return
Brilliant fist/layback crack with exciting roof. Read the Trip Report.
Brilliantly exposed and steep followed by finger crack and layback.
Felt easier than some of the previous days - are we finally getting used to Josh rock?
Short steep splitter!
Very sustained layback flake.
The newly purchased camalot 4 was essential for this route.
A scary introduction to Josh rock.
Interesting climbing on the "decomposing granite" well-protected fun.
Very sustained jamming and somewhat run-out at the top. Scary. A perfect climb with everything... Check out page 99 of "Climbing Magazine" - that's the one.
We climbed the first pitch and it got dark. We left the gear in and will continue tomorrow.
Very thin moves on steep slab followed by a marginal dyno to clear an overhanging bulge.
First Ascent!
Absolutely brilliant route with everything: technical jamming strength mantleshelf layback crack face etc...
Mathias negotiated a tricky entrance to a cave with a waterfall coming out of it. Ended in some muddy dig business
Some interesting exploration but we didn't go down the main shaft where it looked really interesting. No SRT kit. Very visited
Huge short cave. Explored some galleries but no interesting passages
Through-trip Big cave little technical side passages. Very visited
Big tube with mud and good formations second level round trip with somewhat technical climbing and crawling. Long. Very visited
Big chambers bats spiders lake with potential river lots of potential side passages one easy squeeze. Total virgin experience. Only very few traces of humans. Unique. FW managed to catch the 'Bat Disease' or Histoplasmosis as it is apparently called - pretty nasty lasted for weeks but he survived. Only he nows sleeps hanging from the ceiling
New route. Good experience. A festive climb.
Psycedelic praying with candles etc. reentry with smoke and strange sounds. Photos
900 meters from the top.
Deep dive
Night dive
The entrance of Otter Hole has an exiting feature. The river Wye is tidal so the entrance is only open an hour or two during low tide. When the water comes in the entrance (and exit!) closes for about 10 hours which means that once we enter we are comitted for the whole day.
Entertaining trip. Went all the way past the Drainpipe and up in the letterbox
We only had three days as the following days was ear marked for Christmas purposes. There where a lot of nice offpiste riding
I still wake up with cold sweat on my forehead.
Pissing rain and big boots.
It pissed down when we climbed the second pitch
Our first cave ever. Excellent trip. Photo
We gave up on pitch 4 because it was burning hot and too difficult.
Wild ride on the wire. Required careful preparation and a full package of yoor.
We didn't have a topo at this time and the line looked reasonable. It wasn't so we went off route to easier ground before the crux
Tim Wilkinson (TW)
Axels first visit to the Yorkshire caves
Axels first SRT trip
Wonderful to be back in England running with Celine.
Back at sport climbing like the old days! Great place.
Took a proper whipper 3/4 way up
Warm up
Awesome climb on overhaning tufas
Great route climbed with my best friends
Excellent digging trip to dig 9. Also saw the Corkscrew Chamber which was found the day before.
Fine route. Fine evening. Made the pub.
Brilliant rig. World class. The subsequent connection was an ultra burly bit of caving. I was particularly traumatised by the gravel-stream squeeze that nearly caught me on the return. Next time I will remember to turn my head the right way. Good effort from Martin leading this bit and not drowning while reversing in the sump. Double black helmet.
Didn't feel that easy on the blunt end. Great exposure.
Great start to the weekend. Top route. Good to be back.
Managed to squeeze an ice climb out of a visiting German friend. We didn't do much but it was worth it.
Excellent route. Super festive glissade down to the valley afterwards.
The classic of the crag. Excellent snowblade descent afterwards.
Trip to the restaurant of the end of the universe
The Pot 2 attempt - Grosvenor style. Martin lead down to -80 meters. To be continued.
Tried out my new caving radios which works extremely well on these long vertical pitches.
Long trip with an overnight camp in the Hard Rock Cafe. The further speed trip to The Microns was a seriously burly piece of work. Good effort from Martin doing the car shuttle on foot both ways and for the amble lager refreshments in the Hard Rock Cafe and Royston for the very inspirering bit of cave leading in the Rock Steady Cruise.
Lateral Shaft. Superb rig avoiding most of the water of the main shaft. Mindblowing
Main Shaft. Wild decent. Although the water level was low we ended up right in the end waterfall which is serious stuff and very scary but excellent adrenalin fun at the same time. The tick is home!
Excellent sporty rig.
Very atmospheric climb. Good bit of spin drift on the second pitch steep (85 degress) and quite remote.
Superb settings. Full sunshine perfect ice.
Less ice than two weeks ago (more delicate) but colder (better ice).
Did the full through trip. A great evening out with TW and DG - possible the last for a long time now that Fred is going back to Denmark and Mathias is going bigger voids in Grenoble.
Tim did a "Double Wye Valley run" today - I was climbing, but I thought this should be noted. Double! If the normal round wasn't hard enough, but doing it it twice - pfeww. Well done Tim.
A very loose block now guards the start of this great route. More rock had fallen down since last year making the start much easier but more dangerous
Tim lobbed of the crux.
I almost screamed at the final crux move but pulled it through.
Superb route! Really sustained and varied climbing.
Tried Killer Ant (E26a) but this time the yoor seemed to be missing so we did this nice VS instead.
My first E4. I attemtped the route a week previously and fell off. Then I soloed it (self protected) the day before this attempt. Regardless of the climbing ethics it still (2010) is one of my most memorable routes perhaps because I had to wire it so clearly in my mind to get up it. Well proud to have reached this level through consistent climbing through the years.
I seconded a slightly different line - the E2 to the left.
Very dodgy second pitch. Pure munge.
Excellent trip. Did a 'double' abseil simultaneously next to each other and swapped over in the bottom
Very pretty cave in the Fairy Quarry. It's normally locked so you need an official guide for this stuff. Impressive formations
We did the Latheral Aven pitch. But we missed our honoured caving mentor DG Grosvenor who unfortunately had other obligations this Friday evening
The second big SRT trip after Rhino Rift to do in the MD. We did it in three pitches - excellent stuff. We will be back soon to do the big 200ft single pitch
A job needed to be done and TW and I went in to finish the Fairy Cave business. We reached the 'Red Room' which is in the connected Hilliers Cave and is the furtherst reach of the system. Quite an amazing system and very well worth it. Recommendable
Great evening out in the MD. GB has some really awesome formations and some quite entertaining squeezes
We got a hold of the key yet again. Tim rigged and I de-rigged
Superb Half of it was fun. Half of it was a running mare. Absolute savagery. Constant horizontal rain all the way through.
Good training.
Joint led up in style. I popped off at the crux. Tim thirded it clean. Good route.
Royston rested on the rope twice. Quite a strenous little number.
Calves killing me, otherwise the run was great. We were chased by a flock of cows at some stage.
Perfect! The seasons first after work run. It looked like it was going to be a mean run, but after reaching the otter hole car park things seemed to just go really smoothly and no pain in the knees which is great.
Good Trip. Theresa and Rene both did Sump 1 in freezing cold water and in a very uninviting condition. Rene even managed to become a 'Son of The Mendips' as she fell into one of the pools twice.
My arms were like two wooden planks half way up. Loads of good pro which held several falls including a couple of pretty long whippers. Pulled it through in the end (with full use of the ringbolt). Will be going back again for a redpoint attempt.
Beautiful. I have started running more frequently and on less savage terrain. All systems are working fine. No problems with knees or anything. So I guess I just need to go easy on the actual fell runs.
The yearly 'Insult DG' trip was as festive as ever. Sparrow treated us with several muddy squeezes and a good selection of pretty formations
Tried a 'canyoning rappel' technique for the abseils. Worked okay but figures of eights and doubling the rope is preferable
Bar Pot. Possible my best caving trip so far. Interesting SRT'ing good deal of route finding and a long section of tunnels. All rewarded with the inconceivable main chamber of Gaping Ghyll. Photos
What a cave! Massive 60 meter free abseil down the amazing shaft
Practicing SRT for our Gaping Ghyll project
Dihetheral Way. Too wet too scary. We will be back. Photo
Wet Entrance. My first rig - brilliant stuff. See map . And here are a few good photos
Desperately off route I climbed three routes in one.
My first E36a OSF
Hard warm up!
Technical start. Exposed roof in the finish. Excellent route.
We climbed this Wintour's Leap classic in perfect conditions. Tim had a rare lack of confidence and I lowered him down from the midway stance. I was then left on my own on the ledge 25 meter above the ground waiting for Tim to throw down a rope from the top. This he did and I finished the route. Nice little Tuesday evening epic.
Although indoor climbing is not featured a lot on Willerup.com I thought it appropriate to log my first ever 7a flash. Yooor!
Very dodgy second pitch - specially in the light of a guy plunging to the ground the day before. First pitch is excellent though!
We were passed by three young lads who where soloing the Dream. Good going! (Tim later found out that one of them was Leo Houlding - young English E8-climber!)
Team 62 Ideal conditions. Muddy as hell and sun and showers during the run. Despite the fact that my shoes are crap it went okay. I came in 19th of 45 participants. Tim, who ran the leg as well came in 10th, three minuttes before me. Excellent fun. Right knee hurting quite a bit otherwise okay.
Practice Run for the race on Saturday
Worst ever: Hot. Humid. Muddy and slippery. I lead. Tim runs with Claire. Totally exhausted hardest run yet. No blisters. Picked up Claire in Tintern.
Dry Entrance. Good SRT practice. See map
Main Shaft. 50m down. 50m up. 6 dead rabbits in the bottom. See map
Simpsons Pot to Kingsdale valley entrance. Excellent through trip featuring a spectacular 25m abseil. Photo
Ancient Iron Mine. Bow to the Ham
I rested on the rope. Tim took quite a whipper.
Royston and I had to rest on the rope - very strenious stuff.
Very wet conditions
My first proper iceclimb. Good stuff although a bit thin and delicate at places. Released a huge rock which thundered down the gully which was packed with 4-5 other teams. Not good! Nobody got hurt luckily.
After work run. I left the field after Devils Pulpit and was alone until the last road section near Chepstow. Fine conditions. Big bloody blister on left toe.
Muddy. Wet ground. Snow. Good. Good Run - very wet, otherwise good conditions. Snowed on the higher grounds. Blister
First time - twisted my ankle a bit
The entrance of Otter Hole has an exiting feature. The river Wye is tidal so the entrance is only open an hour or two during low tide. When the water comes in the entrance (and exit!) closes for about 10 hours which means that once we enter we are comitted for the whole day.
Frits Ziegler (FZ)
Brilliant route. You abseil down to the base and have to climb out. This is the easiest route out.
Well worth it. The area above K2 is not as loose as it looks from below.
This route is crammed in betimeen 2 more obvious lines. Total eliminate.
Excellent route. Bomber protection throughout.
Great route, excellent protection throughout.
Good to be climbing with Emil
Place gear on right side of harness.
Stunning line and a great route. If you are looking for pure splitter fun in Bohuslan (and you are) then this one is a really good choice.
On an otherwise rainy weekend this one suddenly came into the suggestion pool. Luckily the sun broke through and we climbed this classic in perfect conditions. It wasn't clear to me where the broken foothold was.
Worth doing for the diedre in the top. Brilliant.
Sailed to Kullen with Spooky and MTBikes. Excellent concept.
Frits fell in the lake on the way in.
Happy with onsight of hidden gem of grade 6 jam crack. Sustained and awesome.
Off width to chimney. Burly.
Finished with swimming in the nearby lake. Absolute paradise.
Introduction climb for Frits. The ice was the best I have climbed so far. One blow and the pick was placed.
Good ice all the way. Highlight of the weekend. I found the second pitch pretty steep and sustained. Top belay was in-situ slings with maillon around a block (as opposed to the guidebook bolted belay) and the half-way belay and abseil point was to in-situ bala-threads without maillon. The guidebook description is odd: we walked up easy slope to the what we would describe as the first pitch. Did then a full rope length (50m) on quite steep ice and then a second 40m to the top with some bridging out of the left rock wall.
Nice long and easy for the grade I thought. Abseil on trees all the way down on the right facing the waterfall. Worked fine on a 50m rope.
First route of the day. This one had been on my wishlist for a while and what a route! Excellent line up perfect rock.
I had the feeling I had done this before (which I had, 13 years ago), but as I climbed it it all felt new. Brilliant route.
Did this as the last route of the day. Super pleased that I onsighted it and had plenty of power to spare. Freak Brothers next!
Did this route as the last of the day: it was ambitious and I was super pleased I got up it clean. It was at the edge of my greasy fingers at the very top. It's an excellent route.
Excellent route done as the last of a bunch on a great sunny day.
Done in the approaching storm and darkness. Excellent to get a route in before camping.
Absolute beauty. Next time bring a large cam.
Kaspar Raats (KR)
There was Yoor flowing everywhere that evening. Climbers everywhere - even a team, 2 girls and a guy, starting up a face aid climbing in the dark as we left - totally on for it. The girl flood litted the face with a handheld kowalski light while aid-boy was making his slow progress upwards. They had the yoor.
Excellent route. Nice to have big gear for the wide cracks.
Finally got round to do this. A bit manky in the crack and a ravens nest mid way (with a mother raven and dad raven flying around squeaking) made the route nice to have put behind us
Brilliant route. Lovely walk in, route and walk out.
Half of the climb.
Next to Volvo. Brilliant fist jamming.
Soaking wet
Back to settle a bill. This time it went free. What a route.
Excellent climb. Next time we will climb with without using the tree for the feet. :)
Continuation of Robins crack. Excellent route. Thought we did a VS and it turned out to be E1 as we consulted the book afterwards. Nice!
Doable in the dark. Good for when you just can't get enough rock. Interesting little problem with an exciting finish.
After work climb. Excellent line. Remember to save the Cam 4 for the break. Negotiated the mantle in stranded whale style: it worked but it wasn't pretty. Excellent climb.
First onsight trad lead by Kaspar. Excellent effort.
Seemed like the easiest way up from the ledge. Great route shame I had to hang on the gear. Need more jamming practice. Lots more.
Felt a lot harder than it should. Good effort from Kaspar as the routed required a few jamming moves.
Royston Sellman (RS)
Led the one Royston did the day before. A perfect route for rainy conditions
Excellent lead by Martin. I popped off just before the rest midway.
13 hours spankotronic. With John Stevens
Continuing the dig. Excellent burly trip. I enjoyed being at the sharp end much more this time. We've hit a boulder section.
Did a festive speed ascent as the second.
I got pumped. Excellent sustained route.
Brilliant rig. World class. The subsequent connection was an ultra burly bit of caving. I was particularly traumatised by the gravel-stream squeeze that nearly caught me on the return. Next time I will remember to turn my head the right way. Good effort from Martin leading this bit and not drowning while reversing in the sump. Double black helmet.
Highlights: sucessfull use of heyphone wading through bonzai streamway pushing to Aquenos Choke. Exit series felt hard.
Two-nighter into Dweebland (the end of the cave so far). Excellent trip. Flawlessly executed. We let off two smoke bombs (one failed) at the end to see if there's a draught towards Aggen Allwed. There is. Get your crowbars out!
Excellent little expedition efficiently executed by our three-person's team.
Trip to the restaurant of the end of the universe
Long trip with an overnight camp in the Hard Rock Cafe. The further speed trip to The Microns was a seriously burly piece of work. Good effort from Martin doing the car shuttle on foot both ways and for the amble lager refreshments in the Hard Rock Cafe and Royston for the very inspirering bit of cave leading in the Rock Steady Cruise.
Lateral Shaft. Superb rig avoiding most of the water of the main shaft. Mindblowing
Main Shaft. Wild decent. Although the water level was low we ended up right in the end waterfall which is serious stuff and very scary but excellent adrenalin fun at the same time. The tick is home!
Excellent sporty rig.
Fantastic trip. Made it to the Bonsai Streamway and back.
A job needed to be finished. We wanted to finish yesterdays objective of getting to Smiths Armery but the area was in flood now and we made it past the traverses into OFD3 and reached the roaring streamway which was fantastic to watch but a certain deathtrap to enter. Great trip
We did an unplanned round trip due to some tricky navigation in the Shambles. On one of the many tricky climbs Tom lobbed of and fell around three meters but luckily landed on his feet and not on one of the sharp boulders. He sprained his angle badly and we abandoned the trip and got out safely.
Royston pulled a block of in the start of the 2nd pitch.
Royston rested on the rope twice. Quite a strenous little number.
Tried a 'canyoning rappel' technique for the abseils. Worked okay but figures of eights and doubling the rope is preferable
We were passed by three young lads who where soloing the Dream. Good going! (Tim later found out that one of them was Leo Houlding - young English E8-climber!)
Royston and I had to rest on the rope - very strenious stuff.
Sean Franks (SF)
Picked one of the big ones. Long walk in and an absolutely knackering climb up to the base of the ice fall. We started the first pitch but were drained after the walk and hill climb. We bailed.
Good conditions throughout. Had the route to ourselves.
Frits fell in the lake on the way in.
Sean dropped 4 of my ice screws on the route! Even so, we had a great time.
Excellent trip to Mont Blanc with Mark, Sean and Mark. Got to 4000 something and returned.
Super hard finish to a great weekend.
Excellent lead from Sean. Proper outing.
Sean kicked off the weekend of ice with a steady good lead up the right hand gully. Ice wet but good ice
Just brilliant. Precarious climbing up the free hangin pillar. A peak of my sport ice climbing career
Easy lead, steep but with steps all the way.
Good route with a steady flow for the grade
Ticked this awesome classic of the crag. Great climbing all the way
My first WI5! intimedating looking from below but the wall training had me totally fired up for this sort of job. Super route.
First WI4 lead from Sean. Inspiring lead from the old hatter.
Worthwhile VS just right of the main North Wall
600 meters of pure ice! We ticked all of it although it took us 15 hours! (and then 3 hours to get down). Quite a day out.
Not a bad route
Reasonably exciting in big boots
Training session for our Matterhorn trip later this month
Successfull ascent.
Attempted and failed. Festive route.
900 meters from the top.
Paul Wood (PW)
Everything I hate about ice climbing in the alps. Long walk-ins, queues at the routes and unpredicatable avalanche conditions. We bailed mid-way due to disagreements on commitments.
Better day than the day before. Finished with festive snowball attack on Richard and Tim.
A stunning line in perfect condtions. For some reason Paul did not want to finish the complete climb
Off route. Pulled a loose block.
Great route climbed with my best friends
Fine route. Fine evening. Made the pub.
Finished up this with our rucksacks. Top route of its grade.
Great second pitch.
Managed to squeeze an ice climb out of a visiting German friend. We didn't do much but it was worth it.
Excellent route. Super festive glissade down to the valley afterwards.
The classic of the crag. Excellent snowblade descent afterwards.
Trip to the restaurant of the end of the universe
Nice trip with Paul which regained his interest in caving. A great easy cave.
Tried out my new caving radios which works extremely well on these long vertical pitches.
Very atmospheric climb. Good bit of spin drift on the second pitch steep (85 degress) and quite remote.
Superb settings. Full sunshine perfect ice.
Less ice than two weeks ago (more delicate) but colder (better ice).
Last route of the day. It was either this or another HVS. Having pushed the limit quite a bit already I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to lead the magnificiently positioned slab which looked completely unprotected from below. We fired up the final bit of yoor and I went for it. An excellent route and the slab has *one* piece of perfect gear so that's plenty!
Great route. Paul finally picked up the sharp end and he led the route in fine style. Plenty of pro (very unusual at Navigation Quarry)
Due to our almost unprotected adventure we decided to try some bolt clipping. I had to pull on the quickdraw in the crux. Great route if you can climb that grade! Oh yeah we tried Western Front Direct first. That's E56b on bolts. Paul lowered me off from the impossible roof.
No gear from mid way. Had to pull up some commiting roofs with 20 meters of unprotected air underneath me. Really f*cking scary.
Thought for a few feet I was doing an HVS but then I realised that it was harder. Turned out to be E3. Yoist.
Will Wray (WW)
As festive as caving gets. This huge and relatively easy cave is guarded by a big lake which we crossed in my new rubber dinghy. Seriously festive approach. Followed by a 6 meter steep climb directly from the mooring spot and then a 30 meter high leve traverse with some fairly serious exposure. Great cave.
It was just such a great day. Had a wank at the stance out of sight of Will!
I must have felt pretty chuffed with my first E2 in the book.
Some dudes before us psyked out and we had to create a route directly upwards from our stance to get out of the place.
It started pissing down while I was on the route which made the polished and slippery Avon Rock even more impossible to climb.
Celine Willerup (CW)
Excellent trip. A few dramas. Engine stop on the way into harbour. Nearly struck by lightning in the night.
Wonderful to be back in England running with Celine.
Incredible rute up the exposed arete of one of the most impressive walls on KU. It was quite wet in the bottom requiring a bit of mad going for it in the start which unfortunately turned Celine of the idea of climbing it this time.
Great rute at the grade
Celine's first go at traditional climbing.
Brilliant start to a weekend of Swedish rock sea and sun
I let Celine lead this one and got while she was at the top out of view, I got undressed to climb it nude and to arrive nude at the stance - for festive purposes.
Excellent place this Ardeche. Finally had a go on something a bit harder and although I had to rest on the rope three times I was quite pleased with the tick.
The neighbourgh route to Mathias - is called Celine. Nice and tricky little number.
Great little route with the same name as me! Superb position overlooking GR Vercors and The Alps. Great evening crag.
Great line up the main face. Atmospheric crag with a lot of potential.
Excellent route with an ultra long reach mid way
Quick evening tick. Pleased I am getting used the sports medium at last.
I like this area - the rock somewhat resembles that of AV. Good evening venue.
Superb route. Three sustained pitches takes you to the summit of this excellent place.
After yesterdays epic we only did one pitch of this fairly bolt spaced out classic.
Excellent little expedition. Got the to summit just as the sun disappeared on the horizon. Three long abseils in complete darkness saw us down eventually. Good effort from Celine who had only abseiled once before.
Lots of fresh snow made the ice climbing less pure. Still a good initiation climb for Celine who did very well.
Solo with Celine at ground support (making tea).
Walked up the Dent de Crolles. Nipped in to a huge cavity with our c-rack. Massive draft coming out of the cave. Will be back for further exploration.
John Culsaw (JC)
John in his element. Linking two lines on Gausta making this one.
A variation. Fun. Spaced gear.
Excellent route. I had been wanting to do this for a while. Perfect warm evening for it.
Other side of the roof of Aelgens. Well worth it.
A bit more stiff that the other ones of the evening
John had hurt his finger so he let me lead everything this evening
A lot of fun. Going through the roof was tricky
Excellent wall climb. Gear is there when you need it.
Sport Route. A lot of fun and really technical.
Tried a difficult route. Protection bomber and midway I thought I had it in the bag. And then the crux spat me off. Tried with difficulty to do the crux and eventually got it. Exciting. Will be back for a red point attempt.
Awesome route. Really technical at the top.
Absolute beauty. Climbed with head torches at night.
Brilliant route. Lovely walk in, route and walk out.
Excellent day out in Cheddar. Weather was perfect and we finished the day of with this little steep splitter. We gave a rope end to a chap passing us on bicycle from London on his way to Penzane.
David Skov (DS)
Transport of Spooky from Ockero to Malmo. One long stretch. Extreme. Most of it in pitch black darkness. Cold.
Not a stylish ascent.
Good SRT initiation trip for David. We went down the 40 meter pitch and then up again. Got through most of the SRT curriculum including a helping hand from above once or twice. It was raining heavily the whole day but the cave stayed dry.
Went back for a further exploration. Annabel announced her disgust of the un-rock but David is keen on more. This cave is massive. Over 50 kilometers of known passageway with numerous through trips under Dent de Crolles. The mountain is basically completely hollow and will be the focus of activity in the near future. As with all Grenoblois speleoaction it requires a fully equipped SRT team to explore.
A bit dangerous at the bottom because of loose rocks from parties on the area above.
Excellent stufff. Brilliant crag very close to GR. A bit like GC in character.
Steep aaaaand deep. Did my favourite left side (facing the mountain) exclusively. Lot of queing in the lift unfortunately
Did some excellent cliff jumps. Visibility was poor but due to heavy snowfall
Despite quite crazy conditions (fluffy snow, sun, fog, snowstorm, rain, slush - all in a day) we managed to get some good stuff done. Good jumps.
David and Annabel joined me for the evening and we had a good day skiing/boarding. Still plenty of deep snow
Andrew Walker (AW)
Trip report on willerup.com from an amazing trip to Jordan.
Highlights: sucessfull use of heyphone wading through bonzai streamway pushing to Aquenos Choke. Exit series felt hard.
Excellent little expedition efficiently executed by our three-person's team.
Part of the attempt trying to get up to Annundo.
The guidebook is wrong in this sector and I ended up fighting a hard battle against this 7a thing. Got to the top after two rests.
Fantastic crack climbing. Good lead from Andrew.
Tricky start. Good jamming and laybacking all the way.
Really easy when you've already done it once (but not all the way to the deck). The approach was definitely the crux walking in thigh/waist deep snow to the cave. A festive day. Good effort from Andrew who hadn't caved for 10 years and was srt'ing on a rather made up and minimal rack.
Dave Grosvenor (DG)
We did an unplanned round trip due to some tricky navigation in the Shambles. On one of the many tricky climbs Tom lobbed of and fell around three meters but luckily landed on his feet and not on one of the sharp boulders. He sprained his angle badly and we abandoned the trip and got out safely.
I decided to postpone the UK underground retirement for one more trip - I couldn't say no to a trip down Manor Farm with DG and MB. I wasn't disappointed. Dave now goes under the nickname 'Mr. President' (president for the HPCC) and I had the great pleasure of pushing through some really dodgy loose bouldery bits in the far end which was rewarded with a huge chamber which almost certainly had some further continuation. Dave and Martin unfortunately didn't reach this glorious chamber as they reckoned the boulder bits were too unstable.
Did the full through trip. A great evening out with TW and DG - possible the last for a long time now that Fred is going back to Denmark and Mathias is going bigger voids in Grenoble.
Fine trip. Dave pointed out a number of challenges which we should attempt soon.
Very pretty cave in the Fairy Quarry. It's normally locked so you need an official guide for this stuff. Impressive formations
The second big SRT trip after Rhino Rift to do in the MD. We did it in three pitches - excellent stuff. We will be back soon to do the big 200ft single pitch
Great evening out in the MD. GB has some really awesome formations and some quite entertaining squeezes
We went in with Dave Grosvenor on a good trip in to the wonders of Fairy Cave. A surprisingly muddy experience. Some good technical obstacles to keep the wriggling techniques uptodate. A Grosvenor Special.
The yearly 'Insult DG' trip was as festive as ever. Sparrow treated us with several muddy squeezes and a good selection of pretty formations
A bit of a project. Check out the Trip Note with a little drawing
Excellent through trip. Hard. Wet. Had to swim several times. Massive cave system
Ancient Iron Mine. Bow to the Ham
Very wet conditions
An extremely beautiful cave. With Andy Sparrow
The entrance of Otter Hole has an exiting feature. The river Wye is tidal so the entrance is only open an hour or two during low tide. When the water comes in the entrance (and exit!) closes for about 10 hours which means that once we enter we are comitted for the whole day.
Henriette Willerup (HW)
Transport of Spooky from Ockero to Malmo. One long stretch. Extreme. Most of it in pitch black darkness. Cold.
Another fun weekend of mixed climbing and scuba diving.
Great weekend of climbing bbq'ing picnic'ing and scubadiving! We brought *all* the gear to the crags + kids.
Poul Henriksen (PP)
Joined the yearly parafun meet. Awesome to be back in the air. Happy I hadn't forgotten. Brilliant to be back with the club.
Just as I thought I was getting comfortable with it all Allan phone me up with a last chance before going back to CPH to try towing. I said yes and got towed up to 300 meters height and then released my thingy and had a mad mad flight down to earth. It was absolutely mental and I was just screaming and giggling the whole way down. Awesome kick!
Brilliant session with lots of top landing and take offs. Managed to stay from the beach the whole time and was generally pretty much comfortable with everything. Great fun.
Another great session at Bovbjerg. This time top starting and just enough wind to keep on hanging. It required care with the flying and I ended up on the beach a few times. Biggest tick was a couple of 100% self supported take-offs from a remoter spot and flying back to the others gaining height. Super satisfying.
Awesome session learning to beach start. Quite tricky and also a notch up on the danger scale. Really good fun though flying low over the sand dunes and taking off and landing constantly. Also went with Poul flying all over to the lighthouse which was a great trip.
The tick is in the bag! Ever since the first session in Toftum this place remained number one on the ticklist. Great session feeling really in control all the time. The new school wing is really comfortable and launches and handles really smooth. Did 3 succesfull top landings and 2 beach landings. The wind picked up in the end making the last run a bit epic.
Fully self supported with Poul on the ground obviously. Had some crash landings which I learned a lot from. Landed with my bum on the top on the slope (controlled) and in a fence (not controled).
4 runs at Venø with last run unsupported. Sideways winds. Crossed brake launch.
Ground control. Crossed brake launch in stronger wind. Hard work.
3 runs at Bovbjerg. Forward launch.
Ground control. Crossed brake launch technique.
Wish list (WISH)
Straight 50m pillar
Technical Wall
Monster OW
Lives at Granitgrotten amongst a lot of bolted climbs.
Roof jam
Corner with narrow finger crack
Center stage Hallinden
Exposed OW
Dangerous SRT
Jim Randell (JI)
I couldn't do the direct start and had to traverse in from the left.
Jack Bernstein (JB)
Check out the video from the weekend.
The route of the crag. Superbly natural line weaving it's way up this huge exposed basalt pillar. The locals were impressed by the onsight tick. I was well pleased. Sustained.
Short pump fest
Great position up an exposed arete.
Nice moves
Wet in the top.
Axel Willerup (AX)
Axels first visit to the Yorkshire caves
Axels first SRT trip
We got to the down climbs.
Axel and Elias did the drainpipe.
It was so good we had to do it twice. Next time we need pullies for the final zip line.
Excellent Via Ferrata in Gorges du Tarn
Axel on the Grenoble via ferata. 9 years old. At the limit. The yoor made it happen.
Jesper Ritzau (JR)
Another fun weekend of mixed climbing and scuba diving.
Jesper's first caving experience. Another team was already in there which unfortunately took the edge of the scaryness factor and it was really plain sailing. Still enjoyable.
A week to check out the powder in Chamonix and La Grave. Great trip together with the skiers Jesper Ritzau and Lars Klammer. No trip report. No photos. But we have a fully edited movie (9 MB!)
My first aid climb. Excellent stuff. I fell on my smallest rp and it held. Good good fun.
September 1991. My first ever climb. Jesper Ritzau took Simon Hauch and me up this 2 pitch route on Aakermansberget on Kullen. I was pretty excited for almost a whole year having done this one climb. It was good fun and it was the start of something big!
Theresa Rhoades (TR)
Another fun weekend of mixed climbing and scuba diving.
The Rhoades sisters had an unsettled bill in the sump of this fine system. We went all the way through Cambridge Grotto to the Red Room. Good to be back.
Fine trip. Dave pointed out a number of challenges which we should attempt soon.
A wet experience. It was raining quite a lot but Peter wanted to climb rock so we went for it. I led it but grabbed Fred's abseil rope in the desperate wet top.
Mathias negotiated a tricky entrance to a cave with a waterfall coming out of it. Ended in some muddy dig business
Some interesting exploration but we didn't go down the main shaft where it looked really interesting. No SRT kit. Very visited
Rich Semple (RI)
I love this litttle route.
Great to be out in Presles. Big route at 280m. We only did the two first pitches.
Excellent day out in this superb crag. The rucksack were full - but where in in England it would be full of climbing gear - here in France mine was full of flute watermelon cheese and pate. :-)
Quite a hard start for the grade. Unless you do as most French people - pull the quickdraw.
Superb route! Layback and exposed back and footing in the chimney in the top.
First climb of the year and first climb in my new local crag. Excellent sports climbing.
Highlight of the day was the lunch in the Marmotte Restaurant
Spend the New Year break in Alpe D'huez the closest big resort to my new home in Grenoble
Vivi Hansen (VH)
I had forgotten all my friends for this weekend so all the routes were done on a set of nuts. Quite okay actually.
Emil Willerup (EW)
Good to be climbing with Emil
We got to the down climbs.
Axel and Elias did the drainpipe.
Excellent trip. A few dramas. Engine stop on the way into harbour. Nearly struck by lightning in the night.
Jean Gabriel (JG)
Hang to the rose/thorn. Comitting. Right foot small hold. Nice solid breaks
Lars Klammer (LK)
Soft ground. No frost. Perfect. Excellent run. All systems were running fine.
A week to check out the powder in Chamonix and La Grave. Great trip together with the skiers Jesper Ritzau and Lars Klammer. No trip report. No photos. But we have a fully edited movie (9 MB!)
I took Lars and Helene down Swildons Hole for a grand caving trip. Unfortunately the mission was aborted shortly after entering the cave due to too much 'noia'
After the failed attempt in Swildons we went for the Goatchurch instead - objective: to go through the drainpipe. We got to it after some persuasion but that was as far as the party wanted to go. Drainpipe 2 - Lars Klammer 0
Changed to my old more bouncy shoes. I think it helped a bit on my knee, though it still hurt quite a lot. Specially afterwards. Good trip though - but less hilly than I had hoped. Denmark just is flat as a pancake.
The guys had visited me all the way from Denmark to see Britol Rovers play against Oldham Saturday the 21th of February. Having arrived already Thursday night we were looking for something to do Friday. With Keld and Frede Firsttimer
Steve Wright (SW)
Perfert Saturday afternoon in superb weather. Almost no people had most of the world class rock to ourselves.
I did the direct variation a year ago and I reckon that to be a much better line than this Ed Drummond zig zag. The direct line is much better protected.
Anders Kantola (AK)
Evening roadside ice.
Uffe Hogsbro (UH)
A critical midway hold was wet which made it quite difficult.
This route had been on my Swedish ticklist for a long time. I was well pleased
The rock was still wet in places. The weather was improving as the day went on.
Successfull ascent.
Anton Greiffenberg (AN)
Nice traverse followed by a short but satisfying climb up the exposed arete. Great to have Jakob following teaching Anton the ins and outs of rock climbing.
Another fun weekend of mixed climbing and scuba diving.
Anton's first climb. He was so keen on more that instead of walking of from the stance we mountaineered our wayh to the summit climbing a few other routes on the way up.
Vika (VM)
Excellent route. We finished of by rescueing two female muppets from Central Gully on the left.
Rene Rhoades (RR)
Brilliant trip. Laerke's first ever caving trip and she was so on for it that we decided to do the full Goaty - into the letterbox and back. It's f*cking scary in there - sort of smells of evil and it was a stupendious effort from the girls.
The Rhoades sisters had an unsettled bill in the sump of this fine system. We went all the way through Cambridge Grotto to the Red Room. Good to be back.
Oh baby! This hole had been on the ticklist for quite some time and still is! We had to turn back approx 350 meters in through the 530m crawl that guards the cave. RR had some bad equipment and was freezing and we decided to go back before it would be too late. I have the feeling we will be back - soon.
Fine trip. Dave pointed out a number of challenges which we should attempt soon.
We got as far as the 'very narrow tube' and despite Mathias' attempt of squeezing through in underpants only there was no way it would go. Good trip.
Good Trip. Theresa and Rene both did Sump 1 in freezing cold water and in a very uninviting condition. Rene even managed to become a 'Son of The Mendips' as she fell into one of the pools twice.
Paola Dotti (PD)
It had snowed in the morning, and the bastards closed the top bit (avalance danger) so I was confined to the piste. :-(
Highlight of the day was the lunch in the Marmotte Restaurant
Spend the New Year break in Alpe D'huez the closest big resort to my new home in Grenoble
Katerina did the Drain pipe. Well done. Photo
It started pissing down while I was on the route which made the polished and slippery Avon Rock even more impossible to climb.
Jakob Lapp (LP)
Joakim Svensker (JS)
Highlight of the evening. Boy was I pumped mid way. Quite strenous in the start traverse. A Cam3 is a real life saver (as always).
Hard if you are not a jamming master
Slightly harder that Spagaten next to it.
Soeren Lynggaard (SG)
Nice session with Soeren
Morning session
Chris Adam (CA)
Kristian (KK)
First roof section was dripping wet and we decided to bail.
Excellent last route if the 3 day visit. The roof part is brilliant.
The striking line of the area. We were doing pretty well though I had to pull on the gear in the crux roof - it was soaking wet.
Neil (NE)
Ralf Grusshaber (RG)
It had snowed a lot the previous day and we arrived to a perfect morning. Perfect snow, lots of it, no people
It changed from rain to snow mid day. We should have stayed one more day
Highlight of the day was the lunch in the Marmotte Restaurant
Spend the New Year break in Alpe D'huez the closest big resort to my new home in Grenoble
Al Mackenzie (AL)
Al took a nasty lob on the top crux. I topped out afterwards using Al's ropes from his attempt. That route will go free next time.
Good effort from visiting Ahut member Al I had to bail out on the crux pumped out.
Great little pumpy number. Super pockets.
Joint Wilkinson (JT)
Long trip with an overnight camp in the Hard Rock Cafe. The further speed trip to The Microns was a seriously burly piece of work. Good effort from Martin doing the car shuttle on foot both ways and for the amble lager refreshments in the Hard Rock Cafe and Royston for the very inspirering bit of cave leading in the Rock Steady Cruise.
Main Shaft. Wild decent. Although the water level was low we ended up right in the end waterfall which is serious stuff and very scary but excellent adrenalin fun at the same time. The tick is home!
Joint led up in style. I popped off at the crux. Tim thirded it clean. Good route.
Linsey Scott (LS)
Linsey's first outdoor climb.
Got lost once. Picked up the track again after some skillful map reading.
We were supposed to have been 6 people going but the other potential participants seemed to have lost their attitude. Still, Linsey and I went and it was as always a fine Valley experience.
Mikkel Bulow Lehnsby (MI)
Not an ideal trip. I forgot to stock up on carbide and didn't have a lot of juice in the batteries. So we went in as far as the duck and probably partly because I was nervous about the lights Mikkel didn't fancy the duck and we blew retreat and went out. Shame because I would have liked to show Mikkel the Red Room.
Started caving at 11pm!
Leon Wulff (LW)
Ole Rasmussen (OR)
Ole almost bought the ticket on this climb.
Lasse Pedersen (LA)
Helene Lando (HL)
I took Lars and Helene down Swildons Hole for a grand caving trip. Unfortunately the mission was aborted shortly after entering the cave due to too much 'noia'
After the failed attempt in Swildons we went for the Goatchurch instead - objective: to go through the drainpipe. We got to it after some persuasion but that was as far as the party wanted to go. Drainpipe 2 - Lars Klammer 0
Peter Ras (PS)
A wet experience. It was raining quite a lot but Peter wanted to climb rock so we went for it. I led it but grabbed Fred's abseil rope in the desperate wet top.
An excellent trip! We went into the St. Poul Grotto Series which included some very low crawls and passing a mud sump. Peter did well in this -not- a beginners section of the cave. We didn't manage the through trip though since Peter started having more than enough. We didn't realize that this actually was our probably one and only chance of ticking this sought after Swildons collectors piece. Bummer!
Craig Harwood (CH)
Steve Lougrahn (SL)
Still very pumpy but much less scary the second time. Good effort from Steve.
James Cromwell (JA)
Initiation ice climb for James. He did very well. The finishing top is quite unpleasant.
Great initiation trip for the new speleo recruit. Messed up the logistics by forgetting one descender at the training wall back in the hut. We managed nevertheless and bottomed out the main shaft in style. Good effort from James it being his first real vertical cave.
Mads Fisher-Rasmussen (MF)
Entertaining trip. Went all the way past the Drainpipe and up in the letterbox
Dietrich Paulus (DP)
Pete Internet (PE)
Climbed with Pete from the internet. Meeting him was a fun story. Hooked up prior to Facebook and all that - internet was more a forum for nerds (like me). We met at a bar in BourgdOissan and Pete was a travelling ice climber just like I was at my trips to Chamonix before I moved to Grenoble. So he was carrying _all_ his gear and was fairly random in general. After we had climbed he kept sticking to me and came to my flat at Valentines day walking up the stairs in ski boots. As I was courtisating Celine at the time (we had just met) I was a bit in a dilemma inviting him in. The dilemma was a lot of fun.
Excellent route visible from the valley below. I found this dude who was keen to climb and it worked out nicely.
Laerke Hamborg (LH)
Wet muddy but still a good route.
Brilliant trip. Laerke's first ever caving trip and she was so on for it that we decided to do the full Goaty - into the letterbox and back. It's f*cking scary in there - sort of smells of evil and it was a stupendious effort from the girls.
Sanne Wendes (SN)
Plenty of untouched snow, but weather a bit unstable. Good fun
Katarina Mania (KM)
Katerina did the Drain pipe. Well done. Photo
Claire Wilkinson (CL)
Worst ever: Hot. Humid. Muddy and slippery. I lead. Tim runs with Claire. Totally exhausted hardest run yet. No blisters. Picked up Claire in Tintern.
Jakob Lorentzen (JL)
Jakob did the sump 1 of Swildons. On sight. Photos
Simon Hauch (SH)
September 1991. My first ever climb. Jesper Ritzau took Simon Hauch and me up this 2 pitch route on Aakermansberget on Kullen. I was pretty excited for almost a whole year having done this one climb. It was good fun and it was the start of something big!
Tom Bruntt (TB)
We did an unplanned round trip due to some tricky navigation in the Shambles. On one of the many tricky climbs Tom lobbed of and fell around three meters but luckily landed on his feet and not on one of the sharp boulders. He sprained his angle badly and we abandoned the trip and got out safely.