WHY IS IT 'THE HARD SEASON'?

Basicaly; its cold.

What problems occur in winter for the mountaineer?

Dehydration, frozen up gear, keeping drinking water liquid, cooking, damp clothing and sleeping bags, spin drift, battery life, covered crevasses, cold injury....

For example....

Lets say you go up and aim to have a base camp snow hole at 3000m and from there attempt routes up to 4000m summits.

You spend half a day getting to the required snow hole location. It takes two hours of digging and you have a reasonably sized snow hole. Its big enough to hold you and your gear comfortably and ideal to use as a base. However while digging parts of your down jacket have damped out making it rather uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. You pile your stuff in and put your sleeping bag in a bivi bag to prevent it from getting wet with snow. You get round to lighting the stove to melt some water. You are already dehydrated, the cold and very dry air sucks the moisture from you. It takes a while to melt the snow, and the water you brought with you earlier in the morning is a good way to being frozen. You close the snow hole up with bags and bits to help rise the temperature. Unfortunately its too hard to make the entrance low enough when digging a show hole and its never very warm. Steam fills the hole as you and your climbing partner hydrate the snow around your stove becomes glassy and you can see snow strata lines. Your feet, now in down booties start to warm and your socks in your jacket starts to dry. Its starting to get dark and you prepare water for the morning. You cook spaghetti and squeeze some packet sauce in to it. The next few cups of water are milky white and tastes interesting. Get in to your sleeping bag wearing your salopettes and down jacket. You sleep with tomorrows water to prevent it freezing. During the night you need to pee. Either by pissing in a different bottle and keeping it in your sleeping bag, or pushing one of your ice axes in to the snow to make a urinal, you relive yourself. Thanks to the altitude and cold air on your throat you do not sleep particularly well.

The watch alarm goes of. Its 3am and its time to move for the climb, you rack up but have to spend a bit of time getting frozen compacted snow out of your carabiners which have got frozen up during yesterdays activities. You put your feet in frozen boots and get ready to leave after drinking water and stuffing some high calorie crap in to your mouth for breakfast, it makes you feel a bit sick. Your climbing partner moans as his boot managed to fill with spin drift by the snow hole door making his boot especially cold. You leave anything you don’t absolutely need for the climb, pack the bag you will share, dig your way out of the snow hole in to the night. The crisp alpine air shows an incredible number of stars.

As you get to the base of the climb you need to work your way over glacier and snow junk, it take a while, and a bit of dry tooling to get on to the ice. The sun starts to rise, the prospect of warm sunshine appeals but your are in a north east facing couloir and the sun doesn’t really get to you. You feel cold as sitting on your belay point and scoop some spare rope under yourself for insulation, keeping your hood up to stop the constant spin drift from pouring in to your clothing. The cold wind blasts your face numbing your cheeks making it hard to talk. Its hard to tell if you can feel your feet but they hurt still when you kick ice so they are probably ok. At the next belay point you check with each other that things are ok, take some photos, swap racks and get ready to go again.

After several hours climbing, every time you take your gloves off to put in an ice screw by the time you put them back on they are frozen stiff. Recently you forgot to blow out the snow from the middle of a screw making it hard to screw in. Your fingers are cold and take more effort to grip your axes. You carry on with cold feet and hands, climbing steadily however while climbing through some mixed ground you find it hard as all the good placements are covered with light fluffy snow causing you to swear somewhat and keep bashing sparks until your axe goes in. You make a precarious belay off a sling on a lumpy rock and send your partner round a different route. After twelve or so climbing hours you summit the climb. You prepare to abseil off, cold, exhausted but exhilarated. You take it in turns with your partner to descend.

Its dark again, and you head to your snow hole. When you arrive you slump inside, heat up snow and try to re-hydrate and talk excitedly about the days efforts. Despite efforts you have failed again to drink enough to stay nearly properly hydrated. You drink and eat well, and even sleep well. The next day, perhaps you climb another route or you head back down to town and find that your toe nails swell up with puss and have to be removed. The cold was a bit too much for toes this time and it may take weeks for the feeling to return to your finger tips, even so, you sleep dreaming of returning to the alps at their most beautiful. You get drunk with your partner more easily than usual.

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