climbing – Page 11 – Ross Hewitt Guiding

Foron

17th Aug 2014by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

Rock Climbing at Foron

20th Jul 2014by rosshewittguiding2 Comments

For some reason its been about 7 years since I visited Foron crag, which is a shame because the steep featured limestone is a real joy to climb set against a backdrop of rural French hill farms. The Brits have nicknamed the crag ‘forearms’ as they will always come away worked over. Its was great fun to climb with fellow Berghaus team mates Philippe and Anna Gatta for the first time who beasted me into the ground – its been a couple of years since I pulled down hard enough to operate consistently in the 7s throughout the whole day – I love it though, only one way to get stronger!

Philippe cruising 7C on 1st redpoint.

Voyage – A long 7b that traverses the lip of the steep upper crag

Alpine Summer Returns

15th Jul 2014by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

We have had a couple of weeks of torrential rain and temperatures in single figures which has limited play to training sessions and even some dry tooling. All good for general fitness. Summer is now back with a vengeance and its looking good for a mountain hit tomorrow so I’m psyched. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hunnadalen Norway 2007

7th Jul 2014by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

Hunnadalen valley is situated a short drive from Stavanger in the southern tip of Norway and holds a lifetime’s worth of rock to climb. Pete Benson, Guy Robertson and myself flew from Aberdeen to Stavanger and hired a car for a few days climbing. Expat Nick Ashton kindly showed us a round for a few days and allowed us to sleep on his floor. The locals had already picked off the pure ice routes but coming from a Scottish mixed background we were like kiddies in a candy store looking around at the potential for icy mixed climbing. The highlight of the trip was trying a 500 m gully system on the final day. Being with 2 mixed masters I decided that my share of the work would be the ice pitches. It turned out to be quite a route with 9 meaty pitches of Scottish VI & VII. Half way through the day it started to snow heavily and topping out in the dark we abseiled down a rock buttress to avoid the unstable snow that had built up. In the early hours we made the airport and had an hours sleep before flying back to Aberdeen and making it into the office for a day’s work. The route was called Ergopower since Pete had bought some cheap and nasty ergo tools on ebay which had him squeeling for traction on anything steep!

The gully line of Ergopower, VII,7

The first ice pitch

A cave pitch took us passed the gigantic boulder at 1/3 height.

Guy leading a bold icy mixed pitch

Pete belaying and ready to run down the gully to take in the slack if Guy fell

At the top of the icicle

Thin ice on the gully wall to pass the next step

Snowing hard and arriving on thicker protectable ice, phew!

The guys looking at a bolted M venue

Rock and ice everywhere

New Zealand 2006

7th Jul 2014by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

For this trip I hooked up with my friend and fellow Scot, Evan Cameron, who was living in Dunedin at the time. We travelled all round the South Island climbing in the mountains, sailing the fiords, swimming in rivers, sleeping on beaches, surfing, bouldering, walking. He had dislocated his shoulder a week before I arrived and carried a vial of morphine everywhere and gave me strict instructions on how to put his shoulder back in should it pop again.

The most vivd memory is getting caught in a storm sailing in the Marlborough Sounds and the boat getting knocked flat every five minutes with the mast in the water. I don’t think the boat owners ever sailed in bad weather because there was nothing to secure the drawers and pans were soon flying as the hull rolled 90 degrees. In the middle of the night one of the sail’s securing ropes wore through and the roller jenny sail got ripped open and immediately shredded. The next day dawned beautiful and calm and another yacht sailed past looking at our battered and tattered boat. Terrifying.