Central Trinity (I/II), Clogwyn y Garnedd (Trinity Face)

I was in bed at 8pm last night and got up at 4am!  Now that's commitment!  The drive this time was much less eventful and I arrived at Pen y Pass around 6:30am.  After some faffing around for change for the car park (which I hear is going from £6 a day to £10 a day in April) I was off up the Pyg track as dawn broke.

You couldn't see much snow about so from Pen y Pass so when I got my first view of the Trinity face I was pretty pleased:

I carried along the Pyg track and skirted around the mines following some tracks to the base of the face.  There were already a few teams on it but it wasn't that busy, especially compared to the hoards in Ogwen a few weeks back.

I'd decided to take my harness, rope and a small rack even though I was soloing to reduce the risk of getting crag fast for whatever reason.  I put my cramps and harness on and got my two axes out at the bottom.  As I did two guys were tying together with a short rope, I'm sure I recognised them from Shropshire Climbing Centre but waited until we had all toped out to say hello, it was Wills and Wilson.

It seems to get a little steeper before it narrows and gets steeper again.  It was clear there had been an avalanche fairly recently, so it was necessary to kick through the powder into the neve at points.  Below is a photo of Wills and Wilson just before the gully starts to narrow:

The route is 200m long and when you get into this narrower section you really get a big mountain feel when you look behind you.  Below is another photo of Wills and Wilson in the narrower section of the gully:

About half way up this there was a bit of a scratchy section of ice/snow on rock (well compared to the rest of the route which was pretty bomber!).  By the time the gully widened out again we were only 20-30m from the summit and my calves had a burn!  The top out was about 30m or so from the summit, and wasn't corniced.

We had a couple of pics on the summit before coming down again via the Pyg track again.  Lots of tourist ill equipped and making use of there bums as velco trainers don't have much grip!  Wills and Wilson on the summit at what looks like a Petzl Quarks convention :)

Me on the summit with Crib Goch in the background:

On the way back down I took this of Central Trinity on the way down the Pyg Track:

I was back down for lunch.  I stopped off at Joe Browns and bought Dave McLeods '9 of 10 climbers make the same mistakes' so maybe I'll try a grade XI next ;)

Drytooling at Newport!

Stuart from High Sports has put some photos from Friday nights dry tooling on his blog so I can now do a blog for the dry tooling at Shropshire Climbing Centre organised by Drytooling UK which is run by Pete Hill.  Friday night was a workshop were Pete took us through some techniques such as stein pulls an figure of four's which I found very tough!  Hard on your hands and you need a strong core!

Anyway we did some bouldering problems and some top roping.  The course included crimp grips, jugs, hanging logs, tyres and hanging chains.  Karl put on a great evening and Pete was a great teacher and made it all look effortless (not surprising when you see his CV!)

Anyway here are some pics from Friday night:

Chris Ellis moving onto a desperate blue, keep the weight down the shaft or you're off!

Me traversing using Stein Pulls (or 'Can Openers')

Chris Ellis getting stuck into a hanging log

Me in the blue starting a figure of four on tyres, with the lad from High Sports (name?) locked off in a figure of four on a hanging log.

It was so much fun I went back Saturday dinner time to do some more, although not as well!  I bouldered for the rest of the afternoon which is probably why I was so knackered on the Valleys Race!  If it doesn't break you......

Long Mynd Valleys Race

Well it has been a busy weekend, dry tooling Friday night and Saturday and then the Long Mynd Valleys Race on Sunday.  I don't have the photos for the dry tooling event yet so I will post those when I get them.

As for the Valleys Race:  I planned the route using Where's The Path which is a demo of the Ordance Survey's Open Space API.  Where's the path is a great little site which is free and allows you to see an OS 1:50k map on the left and Google maps on the right.  This way you can see satellite images of the path's as you plot them.  You can then save your route direct to watch or file and get useful information such as distance to a point of your route or elevation profiles.  It's the death of Memory Map!  Once I have a GPX file from Where's the path I upload it to the conversion tool at http://www.gpsies.com/convert.do.  This allows me to get a TCX for my Garmin Forerunner 305.  I might do another blog on this when I have enough time but it's an excellent tool for route finding (it makes it virtually impossible to get lost).

With watch in hand we registered for the earlier set off of 10:30am, I wasn't sure this was necessary at the time as the cut off was 3pm.  We set off on what I knew would be a tough course, straight up the right of the Carding Mill Valley but it wasn't long before I could see the first checkpoint and all was going well!  After this I was on top of the Mynd and it was very claggy but I managed to find my rythm and had a steady pace through to checkpoint 5.

This was at around 9 miles and the elites who set off an hour later overtook me.  We turned up into a valley and up a steep hill which I really struggled on.  I had been taking gels but I don't think I'd had enough and I felt absolutely drained!  At this point I was really struggling to keep moving, not out of breath or aching just TIRED! I managed to make it over this but then dropped down into another valley before climbing again for checkpoint 6 also a real killer.  I took a gel at the top but it was too little too late, I then dropped again before crossing a stream where Alastair Tye of http://www.fellrunningpictures.co.uk/ caught me again (I tried my best to strike a pose!)

After this there was the mother of all hills (well it felt it!)  I was relieved to get to the summit and started moving again.  You may have noticed that I was running in road shoes (don't ask!), I can't count the number of times I went over!  The finish was very torn up but I made it back in one piece :)

Up to checkpoint 5 (just under 9 miles in 2 hours) I was doing really well, after that though I fell to bits :(

Split	Time	Distance    (miles)	Hight Gain (ft)	Hight Loss (ft)
1	00:16:40	1.00	566	63
2	00:17:53	1.00	438	388
3	00:14:20	1.00	278	0
4	00:10:31	1.00	60	66
5	00:10:47	1.00	11	486
6	00:18:53	1.00	320	459
7	00:22:08	1.00	541	93
8	00:10:40	1.00	109	621
9	00:35:32	1.00	539	555
10	00:32:47	1.00	669	167
11	00:40:55	1.00	563	470
12	00:19:16	1.00	112	740
13	00:02:24	0.20	0	132
Summary	04:12:51	12.20	4,206	4,240

Every cloud....

Well after the events of Saturday I did indeed go out for a beer or 5.  At which point we went to another local pub which was serving:

After 4 of these at 6.5% I was struggled to get out of bed at dinner time, let alone at the crack of dawn.  A wasted opportunity :(  Be aware of the reserve, it's lethal!

Come Monday I was still feeling a bit rough but had decided that since I'd missed Trinity and my long run that I'd better pull my thumb out and get on my toes for a long run.  I linked up two routes I've been doing after work/during lunch.  The first route being off road through fields from near Warwick Uni (I work in Coventry in case you're wondering why I'm there) towards Kenilworth and back via the uni.  Most of this is quite rural and you could be in the middle of nowhere, it's brilliant running with my Myo RXP headtorch :)  Since this was a bit of a tester for the Long Mynd Valleys Race I thought I'd run with a bladder and take some gels to see how my stomach coped while running (I've previously only used them on long distance walks).  The good news is that my stomach was fine (I was using High5 gels) and I did 10.3 miles in 1:50 with a few stops for gels, putting the torch away (so I don't look like a plonker in my Skins tights with a headtorch) and a closer than comfortable encounter with a cow so a fairly pleasing time and comfirms my belief for a 1:50 half in March.

In the morning my hip was suffering.  This is an injury I picked up a year ago when I ran up the Wrekin (a local 400m hill) without warming up properly.  The injury got worse even with no exercise, some stretching sorted it out but it took a long time.  When I felt a similar (but not as bad) pain I thought it was time to get a proper diagnosis so I got in touch with the Sports Injury Clinic at the National Sports Centre in Lilleshall.  The lady was great!  She immediately diagnosed Piriformis Sydrome.  Tired gluts mean the Piriformis takes over and the gluts go to sleep.  As the Piriformis gets tighter it pushes on the Sciatic nerve causing pain.

After a painful massage I feel much better, I've got some stretches to do and should be running again tomorrow and fine for the weekend.  I can't speak highly enough for the treatment, it was immediately noticeable :)

I'm dry tooling indoors on Friday and Sunday at the Shropshire Climbing Centre, hopefully some photos to follow.