Matterhorn Plans...

The Last month as been pretty hectic so finding time to blog as been difficult, but the silence as a good reason behind it, I have been planning, and training like dog on heat, its been a busy year and allot of changes have happened so I have found it pretty difficult to get away to attempt some of the routes I want to try.. but.. I have been thinking for a while and wanting to try something difficult and challenging, I decided that I was going to attempt to solo climb the Matterhorn via the zmutt ridge and descend the hornli ridge in a weekend trip from the UK.. I have been training hard and pretty focused that I can pull this off.. however just recently a Friend Matthew Pigden as joined me and Ive decided to team up with him to raise the chances of succes, although I'm a little thoughtful that it wont be quite as an achievement I'm also very relieved as it does change the odds of success by a large amount, but never the less its still going to be a tough climb to pull off. The Zmutt itself is a long route on not so good rock, the difficulty of the route can change dramatically depended on the conditions, we will be relying on weather to be perfect and both of us at the top of our game.
So its Happening!!!! We are flying out to Geneva on Thursday 12th of September then making the drive to Tache, we will start our climb on the Friday and plan to gain the ridge of the Zmutt, here we plan on bivying with an early start, then we will climb together moving fast and light and hopefully in one push make it up and over the mountain back to the Hornli hut in a whole push, we do have the Solvoy hut high on the mountain should we come across any difficulties but this could be dangerous due to us both not being acclimatised.. we Have Sunday as spare day should we need it. before flying back to the UK on the Monday.
This is going to be pretty tough with the fact we ain't acclimatised, the weather and the amount of time we have to pull it off but we are both training very hard and both focused on the task in hand..
The next month will involve allot of fitness training and monitoring of the mountain weather conditions.. we have a back up plan should the Matterhorn be off limits but il keep that quite for now as we are focused on the main plan.. Keep checking my blog for progress and updates on how we are getting on..

I would just like to say a big Thank you to KS Services for there help and support with the financial side of this climb.. Thanks guys :-)

The Matterhorn

A few Shots from resent Alpine trip...

Not a Bad place to pee

Climbers heading towards the Midi Plan Traverse

A little rest of the classic cosmiques Arete

Looking across towards the Geant and Jorrasse

Amazing sunset and the end to an awesome day in the mountains

Climbers/Skiers dwarfed by the Mont Blanc massif

Inspire through Life...

Blackers Quarry

I took a stroll down to a new area today to see what it had to offer, It had only just been re bolted so I wanted to see what it was like. We parked at Langton house carpark and made the walk down, this was made a little interesting by the poor route finding from Phil who some how managed to take us through a wood of stinging nettles, thorn bushes and snakes but we eventually made it to the crag, the walk down was a climb in so its not a child friendly area.

The routes consisted of pretty steep roofs, I wasn't too impressed at the quality of the rock and the tops looked so dangerous, Phil and drew jumped on a short 7b and had a play, they could'nt seem to work the crux section so called it off, me and James Jumped on a cool looking 7a+ that went up a steep corner with overhangs, the route was nice climbing but spoilt by the condition of rock and loose sections.. after this I wasn't happy to try any of the other climbs as it just didn't feel safe, In the alps on a big route id probably take the chance but a sport route in Swanage is no way worth the risk.

The rest of the guys decided to head to dancing ledge but due to time I had off. Although not allot climbing had it was still nice to get out, one thing gained from today is that I know not to visit this crag again...

Looking Into Blackors Hole

Strong winds today.. promenade out of reach

Vera playing with her new camera