North Wales Rock

Gogarth

With a gap in our itineraries me and Gordon hatched plans to head down to North Wales to bag some classic rock climbs and catch up with friends.
 I've spent a lot of time in North Wales before i moved to Scotland, and it always feels a little like going home, with some amazing friends based there it's always too long between visits.

Great climbing and great friends! Llanberis Pass

Whilst Scotland has a vast and varied amount of rock climbing, none of it is anywhere near as accessible, with the average walk-in time of 15 minutes, Snowdonia is the ideal place to dust off the cobwebs accumulated after the winter.

Gordon racking up

 I was hoping that i'd done enough winter climbing this year to have ticked over, but with not a huge amount of rock climbing last summer, but in truth i was feeling pretty rusty!
 Brilliant weather from our arrival day gave us an opportunity to target many of the classic VS routes of the Llanberis pass, our focus being on mileage. Llanberis pass is home to many routes of historic significance and offers some incredible, yet easily accessed mountain routes of all grades.

 We continued our week in much the same fashion, also visiting the crags at Tremadog, sharing days with our friends from North wales as well as a rendezvous with my friend Jon, who was visiting from Scotland and who runs All About Adventure, based out of Aberfeldy.
With sore skin and joints and an unfavourable weather forecast we decided to head home a day earlier than planned, but not before heading to Gogarth to bag one final mega-classic.

"A dream of white horses" is without a doubt one of the most iconic rock climbs in the UK, first climbed by Ed Drummond and Dave Pearce in 1968, "dream" is a highly coveted tick for any trad climber. The route as artistic as the poems Ed is also famous for.

Setting off to climb as a three with my good friend Bertie, we abseiled in to Wen Zawn, comitting ourselves to completion. Route finding is the crux of this classic, and right from the word go we were unsure of our path across the wall. After climbing a relatively short first pitch i built a belay and brought Gordon and Bertie to me, for Gordon to pick up the mantel on he traverse. The wind was building and with that part of the wall being in the shade the temperature was low. By the time we re-joined Gordon at the belay i was very, very cold. Thankfully, Gordon was happy to lead the remainder of the route, whilst i took photos and tried to warm my feet up. Even on second, falling isn't an option, and there is great potential for an epic, with a slip resulting in a huge swing to be left dangling in thin air. The position of the climbing here is incredible, traversing the sea cliff, around a corner and then over a huge sea arch!

Topping out into the sunshine after a great experience was the highlight of a great week of climbing in Wales, and a huge thanks to Gordon for the company, as well as everyone in Wales for their hospitality!

Next Generation Training

I first became inspired to enter the outdoor industry on a trip to Val Sesia with Gene17 when i was working for a bank, feeling pretty lost in life and confused by what my future held. An (almost certainly) off the cuff comment from one of our coaches at the time saw me on an intensive outdoor instructor training course less than a year later, and i haven't looked back since.

Each year Gene17 invite applications to come and join them on a week of intensive training aimed at those wishing to improve, or enter high end whitewater guiding and this year, Me, Bastien and Matt were all lucky enough to be offered a place, along with another six paddlers from the UK and Europe.

A super early start saw us boarding a flight to Amsterdam, a transfer to Venice, followed by a train to Cividale to meet Simon and gang to drive to the Soca in Slovenia.

The Soca offers almost year round world class whitewater of class II-IV (and some harder), with breathtaking scenery, delicious food and friendly people; it's a location i can't recommend enough.

World class coaching, complimented our world class classroom and Simon, Chris and Jakub certainly gave me a huge amount to think and work on. Throughout the week we covered subject areas such as personal paddling, coaching and leadership and safety and rescue, all aimed at guiding in the high end environment, as long with ome excellent extra curricular chat over beers in the evenings!

We managed to squeeze in a half day of skiing in what reminded me of Scotland! Soaking wet, poor visibilty, but huge laughs!

What made the week so special though was the other folk on the course. I can honestly say i'd be happy to paddle a big expedition with any of them any day, collectively some of the nicest and most fun people i have ever met!

The course has definitely re-ignited my drive for whitewater kayaking and i will be working in Nepal this Autumn for GRG, which i am incredibly psyched for!

On our return, we had a few hours to kill before our flight from Venice and so we spent it doing what tourists in Venice do, taking photos, wandering aimlessly and eating a lot of icecream washed down with a lot of coffee! An incredibly beautiful place and was the cherry on top of an already brilliant cake!

Feith Talagain

With the temperatures rising and rain falling in the mountains the rivers in the highlands have once again been at stonking levels. A day off in between running winter skills courses for various providers and work with West Highland College, coincided with a day where both Jonny Hawkins and Bastien DeMange were free. Our original plan was to try and get a run down the elusive spate run of the Ossian and Ghuilbinn, however time constraints meant we had to look for a potentially shorter run.

The Feith Talagain is a tributary that winds it's way out of the mountains  near Laggan to join the upper Spey at Garva bridge. This Spate run offers a truly adventurous feel, with a long hike in dragging boats for several kilometers into the hills to where a flattening in terrain marks the put in.

 Right from the word go we were met with technical, tight, typically Scottish whitewater kayaking, weaving in and out of boulders. 

Jonny on one of the earlier slides

As the river weaves it's way through the glen the gradient rapidly steepens up and with the increase in gradient comes an increase in difficulty of the rapids. Large slides and drops give excellent, difficult kayaking with many technical lines and linked drops to run. 

High river levels gave pushy whitewater, and we opted to scout and set up safety for almost every major rapid. The river flows through several steep gorges, and within them large falls and slides. The largest of which we opted to portage, due to both there being no clean line and the danger of trees that had fallen into the river. I later found an account of someone running this rapid in what sounds like similar levels only to be smashed on the river left wall, knocked unconscious and swimming the next rapid unconscious before being rescued by his friends. Definitely a good option to walk!

The fall in the background is actually about 6 meters

The highest fall of the river

Paddling new rivers is always a great experience and it was a pleasure to share the day with two good pals!