MOB minutes 20.01.2010

[Malcolm Anderson]

As I mentioned in the last minutes Membership is due. ₤15.  And Ian will be sending the BMC money of very shortly so if you’ve not paid please can you sort it out.  Malcolm had commented that we have a lot of member on the web site and that are coming on meets that still haven’t paid up.

At the last meeting Rick had kindly come down and showed his photos from one of his trips to the Alps last year, Great presentation and good photos. Thanks for that Rick.

I’ve sent Malcolm a copy of the photos of the Mob Photo comp in December, I have suggested that he replaces last years comp photos with this batch so if you missed the comp you can take a look at the photos on the web site.

On the back of the popular meet at Roybridge, Mike Chambers has booked thirteen places at The Grampian Club (Inbhirfhaolain) hut down Glen Etive in Scotland for the 26/28 Feb.  No expense spared to bring you a meet at this most desirable hut down Glen Etive. Need to take sleeping bags for sleeping, logs for burning, coins for the metre and a bucket for fetching water from the burn 80 metres away. It is cheap and we are seeking full payment in advance. 13 beds but camping is also possible on adjoining ground. ₤5 per night. Again for full information see the Web and let Mike know your interested.

Reports

At the meeting everyone seemed to have been very busy taking full advantage of the long winter period. Colin, Ian Atkinson and Mark Rothwell had main the best of the warmer and avalanche risk weekend, making a trip up to Brown Crag on Helvellen.  They had had a success full day on Stepped Ridge Gr3 saying that it was quite hard for the grade. 

Same weekend Rick and my self chanced our look on Great End but the snow was very soft and the ice was dropping to bits.  Rick had a shock when he fell through a snow bridge and up to his waist in water, the soil sport wouldn’t wait till I got my camera out. This was the first day this winter that  we’ve not managed to do anything.

Rick and Mark had taken advantage of the schools out for Snow period and good down to Idwell to do the Popular route South Gully.  (see Marks article for a full report on the Web).

Mary and Phil Cooper had been to the Lakes for the weekend Saturday having a great walk over Glaramara and Sunday over the Helvenllen tops nearly getting blown off the summit.

Ian Brewster as usual had been out walking around the Moors above Chattsworth in the Peak district.

Also in Derbyshire Jeff and Mark Ainsworth had been out over Edale when it a been very Icy under foot.

See below Mark Russells adventures in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains.

Coming events

Next meet 3^rd Feb Rick is going to show a climbing video that his has pick up. Leo Holden in climbing in Norway (climbs a new route and base jumps off to finish!)

March 14th

Mountain biking at great longstone os119 sk198718 (orgainsied by Jonti Marsden (07968004905) Small but fun ride voted one of top 5 rides in britain by MBR 12 miles intermediate skill level More details to follow.

June 18^th

High House hut meet Borrowdale, Lake District.

Better known to older members as the K Shoes hut, this has been a popular and succesful venue for club meets in the past. Ideally located just past Seathwaite Farm, with lots of options for walking, climbing and scrambling. 25 places available. We are now taking deposits. Organised by Jeff Horton

Morocco High Atlas December 2009                                                       By Mark Russell

A winter trip to the High Atlas mountains had been planned and organised since September, but typically someone on my team at work had decided to organise the works Christmas party for the night before I was due to leave for Morocco. Not one to turn my nose up at a free bar, but with a need to be fresh in the morning, I vowed to go but be home for midnight. After dancing like me dad in a club I stumbled home at 02:30 thinking I probably should have went home earlier!?  The late night meant I wasn’t at my freshest when my alarm went off at 04:30 to go to the airport. Luckily my girlfriend took charge made me get out of bed and got me to my flight on time, where I could catch up on some much needed ZZZZ’s on the 3.5hr flight.

I arrived into Marrakech to 70oC temps and bright clear blue sky.  There winter was better than our summer! I stripped of to my shorts and T-shirts to enjoy the sun whilst all the Moroccans looked at me strangely, wrapped up tightly in their big coats, hats, and scarfs.

I caught the bus to Jemma el fina square to meet up with my friends and partners for the trip. Cappers originally from Cumbria now living in London, John from London and the Russian contingent Max aka Boris from St Petersburg. They where good lads who I had climbed with in the Argentinean Andes earlier in the year.  Cappers and Boris where training for an expedition  to Mt McKinley (Denali) in Alaska and John had completed the marathon des sables a 151 mile race across the Sahara Desert, earlier in the year. I was starting to think I probably should have trained a bit harder!?

We had a quick mint tea and organised a taxi for the 64km journey to the mountain village of Imlil. To say the journey was scary would be an understatement as far as I can figure out the rules of the road is there are no rules! To add to the fear there were no seat belts in the taxi, not that there where none the taxi driver had taken the time to remove them and weld the openings shut, probably to scare tourists I imagine. It worked!

We got to Imlil (1780m) with enough light to get our first look at the mountains and it didn’t look great. Bare rock, no snow had fallen yet, it looks like Geldof was right “there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time”.

We sorted out some liquid fuel for the stoves and organised some provisions for the next few days. In the process cappers was knocked over by a land cruiser in the village. Not a great start but luckily there was more damage to the car than cappers. 

We spent the night in Imlil and started the walk the next day. I had stripped down my pack to around 15kgs for the walk, but the bright sunshine made it a hot and sweaty walk in. We had an unexpected stop at the last village where we spent an hour drinking Berber whisky (mint tea) with a local shop owner. We dragged ourselves out and finished the trip up to our camping spot close to the refuge at 3140m in a total time of around 5hrs. As soon as the sun went down up here it went bitterly cold, it was time to slip in the sleeping bags and get an early night.

We woke up to a completely different mountains around half a foot of snow had fallen in the night and it was still snowing hard, Geldof was talking rubbish!  I went out to start up the stove and get some brews on only to find all our food bags had gone from the vestibule. Someone must have taken them in the night, great! We had a few packs of food left in our day sacks but that was mainly just snacks for the day. This was going to be a hungry trip. To add to our problems visibility was down to around 10m, so we had to cancel our original plan to tackle Tzi Ougane  and connecting mountain. The best maps we had of the area were awful and we didn’t fancy getting lost and spending the night out there. 

To get us out of the tent and to give us something to do we strapped on our crampons and scrambled up the frozen stream to the Col (3750m) of Tzi Ougane. It was a route we couldn’t get lost on but the blue ice made sections pretty interesting in sections. It was a fun day but bitterly cold which when combined with wind chill made it -15 I was glad I had brought my down mittens and balaclava and was happy to get back in my sleeping bag as soon as it went dark.

That night I was awoken to Boris swearing in Russian and hitting the tent with his day back. “Something is attacking the tent he shouted to me, just as I was about to tell him to shut up something barged the tent next to my head close enough to hear its breathing. Turn out it was foxes that had stolen the food the first night and they had come back to get the snacks in the day sacks. Between me and Boris we took turns to bash the tent when we heard them approaching through the night. I figured the teamwork was not as strong between Cappers and John in the next tent when I heard John shout at Cappers “why aren’t you worried?” to which Cappers replied: “because they are only attacking your side of the tent”

The next morning more snow had fallen and was still falling. Visibility was poor so we pushed back our planned 06:00am start to 09:00am hoping the weather would change. It didn’t. The poor visibility and poor maps meant we had to amend our original plans. Boris had been to the area last year so knew the normal route up Jebel Toubkal. It made sense to change our original planned route and attempt the easier and more defined non technical route up the north col to the summit of Jebel Toubkal. To add to the problem due to the foxes we only had enough food for snacks in the day so we took the decision to pack up our stuff and send it back down to Imlil, rather than spend an extra night hungry in the tent after the summit. We would need to push right down to Imlil to some hot food. By the time we had organised a mule and packed up our gear it was 10:00am before we got on the move, a late start but plenty of time to do what we needed.  The weather was still bad but we pushed up the steep col up to the U-shaped breach in the mountain wall. There were no other footprints all the way, it looked like we were the only people on the mountain. Not entirely surprising as the visibility was awful and a strong bitterly cold wind that literally knocked us of our feet at points battered us all the way up. The col flattened out to the floor of a cirque to which I was reliably informed rose on the left to the summit. Although all I could see was fog and snow and post holing through the deep snow was taking up all my attention!

We pushed up the route to gain the summit ridge using the strategic placement of our walking poles in the snow along the route to ensure we could find the route down. We were all beginning to feel the altitude as we had come from sea level only 24hrs ago.   We pushed on one step at a time to the metal pyramid that marked the summit of North Africa’s highest mountain at 4167m. We had gotten above the clouds of the snow storm so we had clear blue skies and occasional views of the Atlas range out to the Sahara desert.  Clearer skies would have made the view back to Marrakech better but, I was happy just to see the blue skies. I am always amazed at how deep blue the sky gets at altitude. I glanced at my watch it was 14:00 on a Monday afternoon, I couldn’t help but think normally I would be in the office in Stockport struggling with an after lunch energy slump but instead I was stood on the top of North Africa looking out towards the Sahara desert. Its bits like this that never really come across properly to people back home when I try to explain why I would want to put up with the cold

The wind was still relentless on top so we took the obligatory summit photos and turned around to descend. We pushed back down into the clouds and snow storm picking up the poles we had left as route markers. We got back down to the spot we camped around 16:00 the wind had made the total trip at little longer than expected. The weather had been that cold a layer of ice had formed around all of our exposed clothing. We stopped had a break in the refuge for a warm, some chocolate and to dig out our head torches, it would go dark in around an hour and we still had the descent to Imlil to meet our gear. The descent in the dark with only your head torch for guidance was a monotonous process I always find the descents the worst! We arrived in Imlil at 19:30, slow going, dark and a little fatigue held us back. Hungry and tired we checked into a Kasbah for shower and something to eat and to reflect on what was, despite the foxes, a great trip!