Tuesday 22nd 12 2009 11:40:13 PM

Geal-charn Ski Tour

Been wanting to get out ski touring for a long time and I finally managed to cobble together the gear. The last week and the constant snow and cold had me very cyked and a little nervous that my begged and borrowed gear wouldn't be up to it.

Warren dove up from perth and we tackled Geal-charn one of the west drumochter munros. We arrived at Balsporran cottages to find the entrance uncleared and under several feet of snow but managed to get parked in a ploughed bay 200 yards up the road. An unpleasant start alongside the A9 and the brackish of taste salt spray lead past the cottages over the railway and we soon gain the initial powder laden slopes.

Very hard going to say the least, no base to speak of except the springy heather and 1/4 m of powder compressed by whoever was breaking the trail. Despite the hard conditions we soon had a good head going and made ok progress up towards the col north of Geal-charn and the ridge leading to the summit.

As we hit the ridge the powder got a lot deeper and the gradient greater, I got very jealous of warrens heal raisers. We forced a tail upwards with alot of zigzagging and back sliding.

As we hit the small bowl before last rise to the summit we got to some nicer snow and made fast tracks. It was all worth it as the vista opened up, the mist and claged cleared revelling 100s of sq miles of pristinely white plastered hills.

Days like this are magical and as ridges, corries and summits were revealed by the shifting mists and the changing light we broke over the last rise. It wasn't the summit but we had what we came for, the beauty of the hills was enough.

We were soon de-skined and in skiing mode and careering down the powdery slopes, it had been about 10 years since I’ve skied and I arrived at the bottom after a few spills powder coved and grinning.

A great day out, first tour and ill be back for more soon!

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Sunday 20th 12 2009 12:06:26 PM

Let it snow, let it snow let it snow.

So up north for the festive hols, and it dumping anyone whos up and about give me a shout to go play in the white stuff.

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Wednesday 16th 12 2009 11:06:25 PM

The Message

Finally got on "The Message" last weekend, met up with a mr Neil Silver organiser of next years Scottish Tooling Serise. We climbed it in very easy nick, pre made ice hooks all the way! Great climbing tho, will be back to do it in a blizzard and a foot of powder rime. Got a few snaps.

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Thursday 03rd 12 2009 12:16:39 AM

First route of the season

Despite a knackered ankle I set out to the Cairngorm's last weekend for the first route of the season "Original Summer Route" a very nice varied IV, 5 **.

First pitch up the grooved rib was much harder than it looked. Being very balancy and insecure with gear hard to find under the crusted powder. Warren wobbled up the start with first route trepidation but soon got some solid gear and ran up the rest. The next pitch was an easy snow slope which unlike the steeper exposed sections still had unfrozen turf under the drifts. It offered little interest so I got me the next pitch as well.

First Pitch of Original Summer Route

The was the meat of the climb and total the opposite of the fist pitch, being steep but with bomber if hard to find hooks and having great gear. The first steep section lead to an exciting and un-gracefully move on a nose like block, with this mounted an interesting exposed traverse was encountered.

This consisted of a sloppy powder cover platform about a 1/4m wide hanging in space, with Aladdin's colour 50m below. A small ledge goes left to a flake were good gear can be had, this continues to taper leading to award hanging grove. Lucky the traverse is on very good hooks and there is a friendly peg waiting to be clipped before the intimidating move into the grove.

Exiting the 3rd pitch

One established in the grove a serious of steep corners and sloppy ledges lead to a nice belay on a huge flake. The climbing is a mixture with steep hooking and not much for the feet interspersed with dodgy moves onto insecure sloping powder ledges. This was the crux for me epically trying to high steep with and having mono's site about with doggy ankle It all felt quite hard for the garden but it probably just first route sakes.

First Hot Aches

Warren took over for the last pitch winch had about 10m of excitement which flattened out at the crest of Aladdin's buttress.

By now my ankle was very sore we decide against a second route of pygmy ridge.

Great first route of the season and highly recommended!

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Wednesday 02nd 12 2009 11:51:03 PM

The Cam Doctor has come to the UK

Check out a new project I've done the website for thecamdoctor.co.uk offers cam trigger wire repair kits at a much more affordable price than those currently available. Can vouch for the results as well my no4 DMM is now back up and running!

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Monday 19th 10 2009 12:41:33 PM

BMC Summit 56 Cover

Happy to report my photo made it onto the cover of this winters issue of the quarterly BMC Magazine, Summit 56.

Deep cut chimney
James Dun catches the final hook on pitch 1 of Deep Cut Chimney.

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Monday 19th 10 2009 12:41:33 PM

EMFF Photographic Competition Success

Had a great time this weekend at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival. Watched some great films and some inspiring lectures. Two of my pics did well in the photo comp that was running at the same time;

Winner: "Committed"

Runner Up: "End of the day"

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Wednesday 25th 03 2009 02:52:02 PM

Prints

You can now buy all of my prints at My Photobox.ProGallery

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Wednesday 07th 01 2009 12:34:57 PM

Festive Fun

Hope everyone had a good xmas. I Had a great time staying up north over the festive period. The weather was amazing most of the time with cold still air and inversions conditions over the hills. A number of Munro’s were walked and a bit of climbing was done as well. The best route so far has to be Houdini a VI,7 in the Northern Corries. I’ve never done anything as hard as this before, but I found the climbing all right being cruxy instead of sustained. I’ve added the best picture from the climb (above) and a few from the walks to the gallery.

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Tuesday 16th 12 2008 12:41:54 PM

Gallery development

The new gallery is getting there and is up with a few test images here. So far I have a PHP back end which loads images details and forwards this via JASON to the JavaScript from end. This is then sorted and outputted using MooTools for some nice effects. More on the way soon including output of EXIF data, pics arranged into sections, image tag/info searching and direct links. After all this has been completed it will official be a beta and I will be releasing the code and docs with an open source license. Watch this space.

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Saturday 11th 10 2008 08:05:56 PM

Site Development

So keeping up the pace I'm going to be doing a bit of development work. The old gallery system has been stripped out! It was coded several years ago and was just to clunky; both for myself trying to update the portfolio and for you the end user when browsing. The new version will use HTML,CSS, PHP and MYSQL and will be fully automated extracting all displayed information from the uploaded files EXIF and META data. The front end will also be vastly improved and provide a much sleeker experience. In the mean time some of my best photographic art is available to view in the portfolio section using a new flash gallery. You can also view all my climbing/outdoor photography at UKC and abstract/architecture art at Deviantart.

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Thursday 09th 10 2008 01:43:36 PM

Published

TGO magazine have used one of my pictures on the cover of there November 2008 issue, in shops now.

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Monday 29th 09 2008 11:38:50 AM

Site Design

Ok so after a few years of inactivity a new site is being designed, it will be simpler and tiny bit web 2.0 styled but not over the top.

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Saturday 06th 10 2007 12:38:57 PM

To the spammers!

Site should now be secured against XSS, So you can all get lost! will see how it stands up in the next few days and continue to improve if necessary.

On a better note
More updates and new photos coming soon, with a better blogging balance between, climbing, nature, abstract and architecture.

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Tuesday 20th 02 2007 12:27:10 PM

Two Great weekends climbing

I have been out the past two weekends climbing and had two very different experiences that show how variable and deadly the Scottish winter can be. The first weekend I was climbing on Ben Nevis, in the most extreme condition I’ve ever encountered. Crazy day with 80mph gusts, I blown about like a flag attached to two ice axes on several occasions, very scary. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures as I was more concerned with getting of the mountain alive. This weekend I was out on my home range, the cairngorms, had near perfect weather and climbing conditions. I also had my first night in snow hole and while not a 3 star hotel comfort wise, it was an amazing experience. I woke up at 1200m just in time to see the sun rise over the Cairngorm plato and made porridge while being bathed in alpine glow. Pictures and climbing report coming soon.

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Wednesday 07th 02 2007 12:09:59 PM

Stob Corrie na Lochian

Perfect day out, rock hard nevi, great to finally climb in the Coe.

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Friday 26th 01 2007 12:16:57 AM

Homeward

Heading home for the week between first and second term. Will hopefully get some climbing. Snowboarding and walking in, see the folks and relax. Expect some good photos when I get back.

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Tuesday 23rd 01 2007 05:13:32 PM

Nearly Done

Only XML to go Ive got a few details to fix on how its outputed. Soon the gallery in its entirity will be avalibal as an XML document which can be browsed

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