At last! I've climbed some English ice!

Last saturday after work, i drove up to the lake district to join Michael, Russ and Liz in the hope of breaking the curse of ice climbing in England.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early and went to Carrock Fell to climb/play on the icefall. Russ turned back before we made it to the car park. We were the first ones. Here is Michael:

We only had a 10 minutes walk from the car park. I led the most obvious route, to set up a top rope using trees as a belay:

Then Liz climbed the route:

Followed by Michael:

We climbed 4 routes in total. the ice was very good, plasticky. In places, it was thick enough to take 19cm ice screws! It felt like we could have been in the Alps. We even climbed an icicle:

We finished the day with tea / hot chocolate at the Lakeland pedlar cafe. What a great day!

To view the full set of pictures on flickr, click here