Fire, Food and Axes – not your normal stag do

Published on 14/05/2012 in Friends. 0 Comments

Just got back from deepest darkest Wales from an immensly enjoyable stag do, instead of your normal run of the mill event this was a real bushcraft adventure. Axes, fire and alcohol might not immediately seem a safe combination but we were in the capable hands of Ian and Steve from Outdoor Wales who educated us in how not to chop off our extremities, set ourselves on fire or drop really heavy bits of timber on us. When not teaching us how to assemble our shelter, create fire and chop wood we were busy in the kitchen creating a feast of home made sausages, crackling, spare ribs, venison, rabbit, foccacia bread, veg stew, apple crumble and more. We still fitted in plenty of drinking around the campfire, as Dave and his best man might not remember…




The stag holding his sausage!

Thanks to Dave for inviting me, Lucy for organising, Ian & Steve from Outdoor Wales for educating us and everyone else present for helping make it a great weekend! More pictures HERE!

New Toy

Published on 14/05/2012 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Mmmmmm Carbon… that is all.

Saas and Surfing

Published on 14/05/2012 in Alps, Kayaking, Skiing and Surfing. 0 Comments

The great season for snow in Europe continued through into Easter when we headed out to Saas Fee for a last week of boarding and skiing. Easter week is normally guaranteed warm sunny (and slushy) conditons and whilst we did get warm sun at the start of the week the snow clouds appeared mid week to give us some great fresh snow and more fresh tracks! Of course in order to access the best off piste in the resort does mean putting in some effort

Saas Fee is popular for the late season skiing as its high, the village is 1800m, snow sure and has an extensive glacier the guarantees year round snow. Added to which the resort is car free, picturesque and less crowded than neighbouring Zermatt and you can understand its popularity. The down side is the glacier means lots of T-Bars (chair lifts don’t like sitting on ice) and a relatively small ski area. However when you get fresh snow the low crowds and more relaxed atmosphere means the powder hounds are not out in force – meaning we were still bagging fresh lines 2 days later, try doing that in Zermatt or St Anton!

Since my return from Saas Fee I persuaded a group of friends a surf kayak comp at Bude would be a great way to spend a weekend. Howling onshore winds made it more of a survival mission rather than an enjoyable experience, in particular I spent most of the 2nd heat upside down and getting absolutely smashed by the waves. Mark on the other hand is really rather good and reached the semi finals, well done. Some photos follow with more here

So much snow

Published on 31/03/2012 in Alps, Holiday and Skiing. Closed

So much snow in Austria at the moment, and we were lucky enough to be there for the big dump in St Anton in Feb. St Anton already had a huge base of snow (over 4.5m at the top) so the extra 80cm of fresh added icing on the cake.

We started the week with clear blue skies and racked up the miles quickly covering the classic pistes of St Anton followed the next day by those of the white circle around Lech, Zurs and Zug. Aware the weather was due to change later in the week we headed to the top of the Valluga to get in the views – we didn’t linger though as temperatures were -23C and we soon headed down to thaw out in the restaurant. Going over to Lech so early in the week turned out to be a great decision as few people made the bus journey over there so we had empty runs and short queues – a welcome change from other Feb trips! Given the weather closed in over the course of the week, culminating in that big snow dump which resulted in big avalanche warnings and the road being cut for 2 days, we were even more glad we went on day 2. The morning we spent skiing all the runs in Zurs scarcely believing the lack of other skiers on such a clear day, run 10 down the back of Zurs and then traversing in back above the road was in fantastic condition and really let us get in some high speed boarding and skiing. The pizza restaurant at Zug was busy but the Pizza fully justified the wait for a table. We were eating indoors as despite the sunny conditions the temperature was COLD, about -15C to -20C!

From Tuesday the weather really turned for the worse with heavy snow and wind, all was good though by the Thursday when we had a guide and 80cms of overnight powder to play in. The guide was superb and took us way off into the off piste although the 1st route had me gasping after a long traverse and wade (swim?) through the deep snow to exit. Despite this having untracked waist deep snow like icing sugar was absolutely amazing. The run before lunch was particularly special as we went way off back of the rendl, over and around the avalanche barriers and then back into the village. No way would we have attempted such a long route on our own, particularly when the avalanche warning was 4 and the sirens were sounding!

All in all a great week.

New Year – New Post!

Published on 04/02/2012 in Uncategorized. Closed

Well its been a while since I posted much here… the Alps trip last June is a long time past. Post Alps paddling was very busy over the summer with lots of trips to the beach for surfing and kite flying together with a summer holiday sailing in Turkey. The new club Surf Shoe has been amazing – albeit with a steep learning curve, those edges are grabby!

The summer surf trips were superb, highlights were a weekend in Bude with sun and lots of surf, the girls went off on a surf development course whilst us lads shredded the beach ;-) . The September Llangennith surf trip saw a truly mixed bag of wind, waves and rain and an oh shit moment for Abi when Kite surfing. A sudden wind shift saw her heading out to sea fast, a quick sprint out the back soon had things back under control and rescued! The surf shoe also came into its own for the Bore – especially at night. The only problem being launching and landing on the muddy river banks with 3 inch fins!

My summer holiday was spent sailing in Turkey back at Teos, this year we had huge wind which meant monster sessions in the Laser and Dart 16 planing around the bay. Once again not spending a summer under canvas felt like a huge luxury as did the undemanding pace of life in resort; get up, reading on beach after breakfast whilst the wind built up, taking a laser out before lunch and a dart 16 after it made for a brilliant holiday.

After the summer the paddling season was the next thing to look forward to and the start of the season was a classic with the North Wales weekend a real highlight. I’d waited for 10 years to run the Ogwen and we finally had the water levels to run it. We hit a perfect level and fired down Gun Barrel in random directions before heading on down one of the best sections of grade 4 in the country. Arriving at the bottom of Fishermans Gorge I reflected that good things do indeed come to those who wait and, possibly controversially, that the river was better than the upper dart!?

Since Christmas the rain seems to have deserted us and low levels in very cold weather have dominated, the dart weekend seeing very very low levels a rock on the paddling claiming Bogles boat with a nasty gouge and split! However whilst the UK suffers from a lack of rain the Alps have been enjoying record snowfall, Christmas in Kirchberg had me boarding in knee deep powder, lets hope St Anton is just as good!