Crevasse Exploring

Some photos from a stunning local crevasse which Rob, Dan and I went to explore:

Dan setting up the anchors to enable us to abseil down into the crevasse (photo by Rob Webster)

We abseiled 20m down to a fairly wide snow bridge then descended another 10m on foot whilst the walls of the crevasse narrowed, just allowing us to get through.

My crevasse pose (photo by Rob Webster)

At the entrance the walls supported strange mushroom-like snow formations.

(photo by Rob Webster)

Rob admiring the icicles which made amazing sounds when chimed.

As we got to the end of our rope (meaning this was as far as we could go.. for today) it was getting fairly narrow and the walls were perfectly smooth.

(photo by Rob Webster)

Jumaring back out wasn't quite as much fun (it involves hauling yourself up the rope with the aid of 'Jumars', these can be moved up the rope and grip it when they are loaded, there's also a sling attached to one of them in which you put your foot. So it's a case of standing up in the sling then quickly moving the top jumar up as high as you can, bending your knee and moving the lower jumar & leg loop up and repeating process this lots and lots and lots of times)

Rob the Wood Bender

Many people give themselves projects to do over winter, most choose to learn a new skill - learning to play an instrument or perhaps improving on languages but Rob has gone one step further and given himself the incredible challenge of building a guitar. He has spent many hours in the chippy shop over the past few months showing incredible patience as he painstakingly sands away millimetres of wood to create the perfect curves and thicknesses required.

Today was rather exciting as he reached the part where he had to bend the pieces of wood for the side of the guitar. This involved soaking the wood for a few minutes before bending over a heated pipe. Pretty impressive stuff....

More photos and information on the progress of Rob's guitar making can be found on his blog http://www.robertwebster.org/blog.html