Saturday 26 June 2010

Tower Ridge via the Douglas Boulder


Working for the Ice Factor Al H and I took a group of four friends; Lisa, James, Pete and Iain to Ben Nevis for a days introductory rock climbing. Not being quite sure what the weather would do we had a couple of ideas up our sleeve and in the end decided on a route on the Douglas Boulder followed by finishing up Tower Ridge.
The routes on the Boulder are open to interpretation and the ground is such that it's possible to make it up as you go with a mix of different routes. We chose Douglas Boulder Direct (V Diff) with a pitch of something around 4b at the top. The rock was much more solid than I'd thought it might have been after the cold winter, so there wasn't too much in the way of looseness.
Six pitches later we abseiled in to the Douglas Gap and then made good time up Tower Ridge. A big day out for the guys first foray into mountaineering, so well done to all.

2 comments:

  1. Rich, thanks for a fantastic day up the mountain. The exposure was something else! Already looking forward to my next outdoor climbing experience. Pete

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  2. Hi Rich,

    I'm currently working with Alan Halewood on a film project for SportPursuit about your expedition to the Wakhan Corridor; would it be possible for you to send me a hi-res landscape photo of yourself that we can add to the video? It can be an action shot of you climbing, or just in climbing kit, so long as we can see your face!

    Many thanks,

    Doug Stidolph
    doug.stidolph@sportpursuit.co.uk

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