The purpose of this blog is to report on winter climbing conditions in Snowdonia, to keep you lot who like nothing better than climbing ice, snow, frozen turf etc in ridiculously low temps informed!! As well as it being a record of some of my own winter climbing adventures. Feel free to email me any of your own conditions reports & photos you have & I will post them here. The more info on winter conditions the better! email:
andymountains@googlemail.com

Monday 21 December 2009

Idwal Ice!



Davey & I headed up towards the Devil's Kitchen area above Idwal area today looking for ice! To be honest we weren't too optimistic, but were very pleasantly suprised. We could see 6 climbers on Idwal Stream (II)(frozen but still wet), 2 on South Gully (IV), a team on The Ramp (III) with another team of 2 waiting to get on. We decided to head into the Devil's Kitchen (IV) itself as there was plenty of good solid ice at the entrance. All the lower sections of the gorge were good & frozen with lots of ice, and we pitched these sections in eager anticipation of what lay ahead! Unfortunately the final climb up the right hand side of the large cave on the back wall had not formed yet (pity!) Give it another few days/week or so..... So we turned back and abbed off a couple of the steeper sections. We weren't disappointed as it was an all round good day!
So overall, very little snow, but the ice is all forming very well.
Top pic: Davey abbing off ice on lower cave on our retreat.
Bottom pic: Good ice in the gorge.

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