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When the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan you can rely on Gaz to have the phone number of a girl who can help us out. James got off the phone explaining that a tow truck was coming in approximately 90 mins,north face denali jackets, whilst Gaz got off the phone explaining that we had a local strong (and pretty) girl by the name of Nina Caprez coming to pick us up.

So far during this trip Big G has climbed each and every 8a we’ve been to, and a broken down van wasn’t about to stop him questing to Voralpsee to add Alaska Kid to his ticklist. The team had some hard and fast decisions to make so we huddled up and broke out the plan. Gaz and I would leave with Nina whilst James and Mark would stay with the van until assistance arrived. It wasn’t an ideal plan but James is our Dad on this trip so he had to take the responsible role whilst Gaz and I jetted off with Nina to deal with the more fun side of this north face denali.

We were flying fast and light, although we’d brought some warm clothes since Nina had warned us that it would be cold up there and to expect some snow. How much we’d underestimated what we were getting into would be revealed until we were questing in to the crag. In the car park there was perhaps 20cm of snow, but most of it had melted. It didn’t look too bad but things only got worse as we got further in.

Below the crag of Voralpsee is a majestic lake which sits in a basin nested amongst tree and snow covered mountains. It’s exceptionally picturesque and in summer I think it would be a stunning location to go rock climbing, but on Wednesday the lake was about 50 percent covered in ice and nearly everything else was covered in snow. The Voralpsee season doesn’t really start this early, but being foolhardy (or brave) we thought it wouldn’t be a problem. The snow was initially ankle deep which was annoying as our feet were getting wet north face denali jackets, but not a huge problem. I stopped to film Nina and Gaz walking along the side of the lake in the snow and it turned out to be a good decision. As they were walking I suddenly saw Nina fall waist deep into the snow, her feet actually going through to the water of the lake! One step further it was Gaz’s turn and echoing around the basin were his shouts of frustration blended together with my laughter. Trying to walk sideways up the bank proved impossible as the snow was too deep so they bravely pushed on, constantly falling through the snow before eventually arriving at solid(ish) ground.