Lee Harrison Climbing

There looked to be some good freeze-thaw cycles going on in the Lakes over the preceding 48 hours so a trip to the Lakes on Sunday looked potentially worthwhile. Worst case scenario was that we would end up at The Works if things proved warmer than expected. With a freezing level forecast at 700-800m Gable seemed an obvious choice. Maybe some mixed routes would be in nick, however I anticipated the thaw cycles would have stripped the buttresses. We went with an open mind with the view to climbing whatever might be in condition. The buttresses looked black on the approach, except towards the top, so gullies provisionally looked the best bet. We aimed for Central Gully. The only problem was that the snow was still soft amongst the boulder field directly beneath the crag. Ominous signs that we might be walking back to the car shortly. Maybe 50-100m below the start of the route the snow started to firm up and our optimism improved. I wasn't convinced that any mixed routes woul...

With lots of fresh snow and cold temperatures in the Lakes it seemed unnecessary to drive all the way to Lochnagar this weekend, as had been the original plan. The high winds forecast in the Scotland also looked to be less of an issue in the Lakes. Mike and me made a late decision to switch plans to the Lakes and drove to Ambleside. The plan had been the climb Bowfell Buttress (V,6) today but there were multiple teams queuing at the bottom of the route on our arrival with teams seemingly occupying every belay above. My friend Ryan was starting the second pitch. We waited but things weren't progressing quick enough. People were struggling on the first pitch. With the crux not being until the third pitch it was quite likely that even when we did get on the route there would be further delays higher up. We didn't fancy waiting around until mid-afternoon and then climbing half the route in the dark and therefore cut our losses and climbed Plaque Route (IV,4) further le...