01 Dec 2021 - Ice Ice Baby

It's been 5 years (I hadn't actually realised that until I started writing this post) since I last ice climbed in earnest and as a result of the pandemic, 2 years since I had been in a snowy and icy environment.

With limited annual leave, a shortage of funds and the unpredictable nature of both the weather and the potential for further covid-related restrictions, I needed an intense, local plan, to refresh my ice climbing skills.

Why is this relevant to Everest you may ask? Well, despite what many people would have you believe, although there are fixed ropes up Everest, there are still sections of steep ice climbing, ranging from the ice cliffs at the end of the Khumbu ice fall that we have to climb to access camp 2, or the extensive Lhotse face which is a sheet of dry, blue ice that spans hundreds of metres, with occasional bulges of up to 80 degrees. I also hadn't ice-climbed properly in my high-altitude boots, which is what I'll be wearing for pretty much the duration of the expedition when on the mountain, so again, it was important to make sure I was comfortable climbing in my cumbersome moon boots.

What I came up with was a day of 1:2:1 tuition at the National Ice Climbing Centre in Kinlochleven, Scotland and if I could squeeze it in, a quick jaunt up Ben Nevis the day before in what I thought would be relatively passable conditions, with some likely snow at the top. Read on to see how that panned out...

So it turns out that climbing Ben Nevis in the wake of a yellow and amber warning for both snow and wind makes for trickier conditions than expected. Despite the temperature being a touch above freezing, the path was laden with ice which made for an exceptionally cautious ascent without crampons before the snow-level hit at around 700m. Wind chill took the real-feel down to -15C / -20C in places and on the summit was both a white-out and knee-deep snow. Thankfully, it's not my first rodeo up a wintery mountain and with my trusty ice axe, this turned into an unexpectedly perfect training day, getting to endure proper Winter conditions, navigate with low visibility and get back in good time before sun-down. It was also, as I'm sure you'll agree, very beautiful:

The Ice Climbing Centre was a lot of fun and even more fortuitously, I had the place more or less to myself. This meant after a morning of getting a feel for the ice again we could hone some more Everest-specific skills that wouldn't typically be on the training menu at the Centre. This included my guide, James, kindly setting up a fixed line and jumar so that I could practise ascending the Khumbu Ice Fall with my mountaineering axe (rather than two ice-climbing axes) and even got to do a spot of climbing with just my mountaineering axe and no jumar at all, as you never know what you may have to do on the mountains. Needless to say, I had a brilliant time and was pleased to have climbed some of their harder routes in my Expedition Boots, which was just the skills reminder and confidence boost that I was after. Now I just have to hope that the Omicron variant doesn't scupper next year's trip!