Myself and George Reid had a great day skiing up Beinn Glas. The northern slope was scoured and was as smooth as a blue run! We managed a bit of heather bashing to ski down to within a hundred metres of the road
The temperature was a thaw inducing 7 degrees at the car park. A load of snow disappeared during the day on the sunny southern slopes.

Some thoughts on adapting Aztar axes for leashless climbing.

Aztar with Grivel slider bolted on.

Since this was taken I’ve managed to move them further down - using a longer bolt helps this.

 This solution chokes the swing slightly and doesn’t work if you’ve big gloves or big hands! However I’ve climbed with these for two seasons now and they work very well and leave the spike clear.

Petzl Charlet grip rests. To fit these you need to cut some rubber away and drill a hole.

Only a small amount of rubber needs to be cut away – Before and after for comparison. The griprest fits perfectly into the spike at the bottom.

Now the hard bit. The spike is made of tempered steel and very hard to drill through!

The instructions for the griprests say to use a 5mm drill bit. I measured the bolt to be 4.8mm thick – the problem is with a 5mm hole you’re not leaving a lot of spike.

I started trying to drill with a 2mm titanium drill bit as a pilot hole. I made a slight dent. My father-in-law took it to a workshop and used a tower drill. It made a slightly larger dent. It is really, really hard to drill, and I needed my axes so I gave up and re-attached the grivel sliders but lower down the handle!

It is possible to attach the griprests – I know two other folk who have drilled, and other people who have filled in the spike hole and attached through that.

There are a few web posts that I found useful:

Cascade Cilmbers Forum

Another solution which looks interesting, but I’m not convinced the griprest won’t lever off when plunging in snow:

Link posted on UKClimbing.com

I tried this, but my thoughts were correct – it just levers off very easily, so I wouldn’t reccomend it as a robust solution.

Jim Rigg sent me these photos of his conversion and said: “The job’s not perfect.  If you look closely at one of the pictures you will see that the drilled hole breaks the edge of the spike.  However, the job is mechanically sound – the diameter of the bolt is greater than the width of the gap.  The steel is incredibly tough and difficult to drill – we broke two ‘normal’ drill bits before moving on to something more specialised. A key point is to ensure that secure clamping is achieved.”

Aztar with grip cut away ready for drilling

Drilling in progress -note well clamped

Dirlling complete -

Ready to climb.

Any thoughts, please comment!

Climbing yesteday at The Brack with Martin and John. Lots of wading required in places, but the snow pack here on this NE aspect was mostly stable. Elsewhere in Scotland is a different matter!

We climbed the Abyss and January Butress – the turf was well frozen on both routes and it was a stunning alpine day.

Glenn and Jerry were on Beinn an Dothaidh on Sunday – ”
West Buttress, III. great turf but had a fair amount of soft snow making it slow going. steep chimney on pitch 2 felt hard for III. freezing level at crag base. 6c in the valley! 4 or 5 other teams in taxus area. jerry led a full 60 meter top pitch to finish a quality route which deserved its star.”

Andrew, Halli, Andri and I had the inaugural
Scottish meet of the Icelandic Alpine Club at the CIC hut on Ben Nevis. Conditions were mostly cold and snowy with significant wind slab build up at times. The upper corries were all avalanching at times so we tended to stay low. That being said, Itallian climbers staying at the hut ventured up to Indicator Wall wading through waist deep snow in Obsevatory Gully.

We climbed Fawlty Towers, Castle Ridge, Nerid Gully and the Carn Dearg Cascades. Other climbers climbed Point 5, Hadrian’s Wall, North East Buttress and Gardyloo Gully.