Journey into mountaineering with the discovery of scrambling

On Scottish Easter trips to the Hebridean Islands a seed started to grow that grew into more Father / Son trips to wild places.

One of the most memorable was our scramble and bivi trips up Bryant’s Gully. Bryant’s Gully is the longest scrambling route in Snowdonia with over five hundred metres of scrambling ascent and with a large grass ledge a third of the way up, which made a perfect place to split the scramble into a multi day adventure with a bivi. Having parked the car in one of the laybys in the Llanberis Pass, we packed the last few items into our bags and ascended easily up the gully clambering up a series of wet shelves, short steps, chockstones and boulders before arranging at the ledge. As was often the routine on these trips the first thing we did was to get the stove on to make a hot drink, followed by getting our bivi bags, sleeping bags etc ready for the night. Sat on this small ledge my mind started to wonder if it was possible to roll over enough in the night to fall off the edge, which was highly unlikely although building a temporary short stone wall, with snows nearby, put these fears to bed. One of my favourite parts of being in the mountains is sleeping high surrounded by nature and what could be better way to achieve this than being part way up a scramble, with amazing views across to Crib Goch.

The morning came around quickly, after breakfast it was time to put everything back in the bags and head off. To this day when I pack up after a night out I expect my bag to be smaller after eating some of the food although often my bag seems fuller on the second day than the first day? The second day had a treat in store for us; after gaining some more height in the gully we arrived at ‘The Trap’; nervously I pulled over the boulder, now either side of us were the insurmountable walls, to go back would involve going back past the tricky boulder and the only way to go was fifteen metres of evil-looking, wet and slimy wall. My heart began to race, so this looked tricky enough with just a day sack and I had my bivi gear to carry on my back. As I got closer to the wall and inspected it the route up was clear and on some good hand holds, after a few rock moves I was at the top. At this point the gully open up and other than quite a bit of scree we made good progress up to the top.

This was just one of many weekends away wildcamping and scrambling, all of them have different memories for me, some we were eaten by midges, some were snowy, all of them left a lasting impression on my and fuelled my love of getting wildcamping and multiday journeys in the mountains.

I had been waiting till my eighteenth birthday so I could go and do my Summer Mountain Leader (ML) Training; then just before starting university I went to do it at the National Outdoor Sports Centre at Plas y Brenin; a thougherly enjoyable week was had learning in the sunny Snowdonia Mountains, and I was feeling motivated to get involved with the The University of Warwick Mountaineering Club, which involved more rock climbing than pure mountaineering and I got a bit distracted from my Mountain Leader qualification by doing my Rock Climbing Instructor (RCI), at the time it was then Single Pitch Supervisor Award (SPSA); I put this to good use running trips away climbing Towards the end of my time at University I joining The Warwick University Hill and Mountain Walking club, where I had the opportunity to get back to what I loved scrambling up mountains and putting to good use the skills I had developed on the Summer Mountain Leader training and from rock climbing. The majority of the trips this club did were to the mountains and I soon started leading scrambling walks.

Every year the Hill and Mountain Walking Club ran a New Year trip to the Highland of Scotland; these trips included hiking over Munros, doing easy winter climbs and the odd night in bothies. A particularly memorable day out was doing Curved Ridge on Buachaille Etive Mor. The three of were up early, arriving at the bottom of the route just as first light was coming. We headed up the route although due to the poor conditions were making very slow progress until it became obvious that we would not be making it to the top before it was dark. So it was time to head back down, this was a series of absails which went smoothly with the one exception of one of the party dropping their headtorch and then finding it again on the next ledge down. We arrived back at the bottom of the route just as it was starting to get dark.

My initial trips to the Alps were with a similar group from the University Clubs and there began a series of summer trips travelling out to mainly the Swiss Alps and learning the skills of alpine mountaineering, and for me the unfortunate effects of headaches from not acclimatizing properly when at altitude.

At this point with winter trips to Scotland, summer trips to the Alps and lots of weekends running, hiking and climbing in the mountains and moors of the UK I was well on my way to what would be a constant theme through my life.