Back on the rails (Alpine climbing)
Tuesday 20 January 2009 04:50PM
It’s been a while since I’ve had anything worth putting up on here, and, well, I suppose I still don’t. First my girlfriend and then my family have taken priority for the last few months and besides a little bouldering I’ve done no climbing for ages, but as I write this I’m sat on a train thundering southwards towards the Alps.
Whenever I plan a trip to the Alps, there always seems to be a rush of freelance work, or potential freelance work, and conditions in Scotland start to look very interesting. This time is no different, after weeks of having little paid work to do (still plenty to keep me busy on my Msc), and planning endlessly to go to Scotland but being put off by the weather, I now have two big jobs that are looking like they will probably go my way, and it’s snowing like crazy north of the border. Still, Chamonix is not a bad place to be going instead of Scotland!
I’ve been looking forward to this trip for months, as an opportunity to get into ski mountaineering racing, and it’s looking like an exciting line up for the next few weeks. Things kick off this weekend with the the Marecottes race, a day race in Switzerland with 1672m of ascent (and descent, on skinny racing skis, gulp!), that I’m doing with Jonny Morgan. I’m not expecting to do especially well, this will be my first proper race and my skiing is still a bit ropey, but hopefully I’ll be competent enough to enjoy the event and not slow Jon down too much. Then at the end of this trip I’ve got the TSF Millet with Ben Bardsley, which should be another beasting. By then I should have got a good few weeks on skis, and possibly another couple of races, and be feeling a bit more confident on the descents. In between, depending on what happens with the work, there might be time for the odd day of climbing, judging by what other people have been up to out there conditions sound superb…