sunshine & frost

P and I had been paying close attention to the weather forecast, and booked Friday off work. We headed over to Shepherds Crag in Borrowdale, and had the crag to ourselves for the whole day. It was a glorious day, and actually not that cold, despite the sharp frost on the ground, frozen puddles, frosted white grass and the long shadows of mid winter. We were both feeling a little rusty on trad climbing - me inparticular, as I reckon its May since I did any trad climbing. The crag was also quite damp, north butress was dripping. We did Kransick Crack, one of the Brown Slab easy routes and the VS at the right hand side of Brown Slabs up the corner. A beautiful day and one to remind me that I do enjoy climbing in the winter!

Saturday, the roads around us were very slippy, and we slithered the car up to Wasdale Head, for a walk. I wanted to check out the direct line between Styhead and Great End, so we walked up the main path to Styhead, and took the easiest line up to the summit of Great End. The ground was frozen solid and was fairly icy in places. The sky wasn't quite as clear as we had hoped, with cloud boiling up to the east and spilling up over the higher western hills. We mooched onto the Pike, and dropped down towards Mickledore, stopping for lunch above Pike's Crag out of the wind. We then returned to the car down Hollowstones. Despite the cloud it was still a beautiful day, with good views around the Lakes and beyond.

Sunday, we had originally thought about going up to Heron Crag for a look see, with the back up plan of Bell Stand if the wind was too much or the crag was too cold. Overnight there was a very sharp frost and it was bitter. This put us off heading up that way as it was soo cold (three nights of accumulated frost!) So we decided to go bouldering on the local stones at Fisherground. Again a lovely day, although a fair amount of high cloud was around which took the edge off the temperature. We stayed until dark, watching the sunset behind a thin bank of cloud out to sea.

Late on we walked up onto Fell End to watch for meteors. Fortunately we seemed to be in a hole in the clouds, with high cloud to the north, east, south and west, but our sky was clear enough to watch a fair number of shooting stars. It was a breath-taking sight. Wanted to stay for muh longer, but eventually bed called at the end of a busy weekend.