Hiking, Scrambling, Mountaineering, and Climbing

Great for kicking steps in Scottish snowdrifts

I even had blister resistant socks on

Double layered ones? Sounds like the anti blister stars must not have been aligned...

OK, so turns out that the La Sportiva Nepal Extreme is more complex than I thought!

Just discovered that the padded tongue is removable and adjustable so that you can move the padding from the lower part of the foot to the ankle/shin area to fill out dead space if you have it.

Put new insoles in today and moved the tongues. Will do some longer dog walks in them when the weather is a little cooler to see if these changes have helped.

I remember having a pair of MoD standard issue combat boots as a cadet, the eyelet where the laces moved up the ankle had a locking feature that was excellent for this. I wonder why it isn't used more elsewhere?

The La Sportiva have this too. Took me a while to realise. Really should be more widespread.

Now I'm starting to wonder if my old North Face Vertex boots had it and I never realised!

When abseiling how do you lock the rope so you can hang?

Salomon Quests have this locking eyelet as well

If you plan to lock off and need to be hands feee, you should use a descender. Technically, a lock off on a standard abseil belay is an unplanned situation. It's good practice to use a prussik to stop you falling if you let go of your belay strand in an accident though and on occasion I'm happy to take that "risk" to go hands free for a task. Failing that, look up the leg wrap technique. I tend to use a four wrap prussik but that might be overkill if you're using more than a pair of half ropes.

But as I said, if you plan to abseil and plan to lock off to do something hands free, use a descender designed for the task. Prussiks and leg wraps can fail.

Speaking of prussiks, we had an awesome time rappelling into crevasses and self rescuing at the beginning of August. The draw back to using a single half rope on a glacier is the blisters if you have to self rescue! Lesson painfully learned!

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Just spent three nights wild camping on Skye. Not been for ages. Was amazing, we totally lucked out on the weather

Camping at The Quiraing was magical after walking the Trotternish ridge

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This looks great - do you have a route that you hiked?

I should have said we didn't do the entire Trotternish ridge, it's something like 23 miles. We started from the cemetery car park and walked away from the Quiraing for about 5 miles then doubled back and did the Quaraing circuit before veering off to that camp spot.

Coral Beach was another amazing wild camp on Saturday

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Bit busier in Wales

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/walkers-snowdon-summit-stand-row-18859771

Jesus. Snowdon is becoming like Everest or the Matterhorn.

Anybody here climb at White Spider?
Am looking to climb there for the first time tomorrow but unsure if, like a lot of other gyms, they aren't taking new registrations at the moment?

I climb there sometimes. The registrations links (https://spiderclimbing.com/white-spider/registration-forms/) on their website seem to be working. I don't know of any climbing gyms which have suspended new registrations, although most of them are limiting capacity, and some are limiting climbing to 2 hours at a time.

That looks very painful. As an alternative suggestion to what others have said, if you are considering new boots, have a professional fit. Its completely different from a shoe fit or a trainer fit etc. It did me the world of good. I had a fantastic pair of Soloman boots (sadly no longer made) which lasted me around a decade, but before and after that pair I had nightmare blisters in every pair I tried. The worst offenders being La Sportiva, Zamberlan and Scarpa. It was not unusual to end a short day with 3/4 chronic blisters, often bleeding etc. I reckon I must have spent well over a grand on ill fitting boots which either got passed on or sold on.

After finally resorting to a proper fit I found I have unusual ratio between length of toe and length of arch as well as very flexible toes. Knowing this the guy suggested specific models that would allow for my particular set of criteria, and included options in various price ranges. I ended up with some Meindel boots which are now 5 years old and are probably the comfiest and best fitting footware I have ever had. Not had a single walking boot blister since.

Has anybody done Coast to Coast? I’m interested to hear what you itinerary was.

Me and a couple of mates are planning to do it next August and would like to do it 10 days and it shouldn’t be difficult as we’re all fairly fit. Obviously I know that it’s your feet that make or break a trip like this.

Not sure whether to do four days to cross the Lakes and then boot it from there, or try and keep it around 20 miles a day throughout.

We’re up for camping the odd night but will also use hostels and book a hotel in Richmond.

Has anyone ever run up Snowdon? I'm heading there in a month, and would love to visit the summit but I don't have the 5 hours each way to burn. Any advice would be appreciated.

What kind of mountain experience do you have? I scrambled and ran the Snowden horseshoe a while ago - fantastic short day out and will avoid most of the crowds so you can go your own speed. But it’s exposed and quite long - I did it while pretty fit and climbing a lot.

If you're fit enough to consider running up, then it wouldn’t take 5hrs each way just walking that’s for sure. Up pyg then down miners took me and my wife 5hrs 30 total. We weren't really going for it, just a normal fair stomp. We could also have been a bit quicker if we weren’t stopping and darting off the track all the way down picking up other people’s rubbish. Note that doesn’t include time for current fascination with queueing and fighting at the top ;)

Quick run up. Bonus fight to stretch out on the top. Quick run down...perfect!

@Momentum not much mountain experience really - I'll be taking the PYG track from Pen y Pass.

Ok great, I'll head there for sunrise and hope to beat the crowds / fights.

Someone with more experience might correct me but it may be quicker to ascend via miners track (as its more of a flatfish gravel path) until you hit a proper scramble up to join PYG, if there's no huge crowds this shouldn't take too long it's then probably easier to descend via PYG as its a more gradual slope but much rougher under foot overall.