A Day of Rain and Tooling at The Ice Factor

     Sitting in front of the fire at the King's House Hotel, we trawled through the forecasts, it wasn't looking good. The following 24 hours were bringing 100mph winds and a lot of rain. We came to the decision of a lie in and assess things in the morning, but we both knew that we weren't going to be going into the mountains. 

Traversing at The Ice Factor

     As promised the rain came, good and proper, waking us in the van. We hoped it was similar to a tent, when often it isn't actually as heavy once you get outside. This definitely wasn't the case. Everything looked stripped of snow with the warm temperatures and rain as we drove down Glen Coe, all the mountain burns and waterfalls were on show. We were going to The Ice Factor in Kinlochleven.

James moving onto the steeper board

     With our winter mindset, we settled on some indoor tooling. I had never climbed indoors with tools before and had only had a couple of drytooling sessions at The Works in the Lakes. I still consider mixed climbing to be a weakness in my winter climbing, despite concentrating on it a couple of years ago. Good hooks in cracks are fine, however picks on edges and holding a torque still feel insecure and I'm sure it shows when I climb. We climbed in rock shoes today which made using our feet a lot easier. We began traversing across easier walls, keeping low on our axes to produce a positive downwards force through the holds. This really got us working on our body positioning and weight transfer as we matched holds and axes, swapping hands to make our traverse. 

     We moved onto the steeper boards, making it harder to maintain good form whilst trying to stay low on our tools. We made several little circuits, each with bigger and more awkward moves, making each more physical than the last. It is incredibly physical, much more so than many climbers make it look it pictures and videos. It is still an area to build on and I hope to make more trips to The Works in the Lakes to build up some more physical strength in this rapidly growing discipline.