In reply to paddy cave:
Went up to Red Tarn on Friday. Walked up at 23:00 and pitched Terra Nova tent, beautiful clear skies on the walk in. Could see lots of constellations and even Andromeds galaxy and Orion Nebula.
Woke up on Saturday at 8am and beautiful clear skies again. Went up striding edge No Crampons were needed. We then walked 50m past the trig point of Helvellyn and set up a snow bollard with a decent 20cm depth (Aiming for the top of the little butress to the right of the large snow bowl) perfect shot!! Cornice was rounded and very firm and had to hack my way through. Snow bowl was very interesting.....6" of soft snow then 3" of hard pack then loads of graupple under tbat (prefect for slushies
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We did a couple of short routes on this little butress...a direct route up the middle 30m with a traverse ledge 6" wide and 3 meters long which required some torquing of the axes. The other route was on the far right hand side a kind of gullyeading to a corner, length 30m, with a difficult 4meter crux involving a slight overhang with laybacking and using the axe upside down (stein pull) to get leverage. After the crux is a long snow plod with no protection for 15m.
Not sure what grade but if people have done the route please let me know.
Pictures and video to follow.
Weather at 9pm saturday was high wind gusts flattening the tent to our faces...blizzards...so we packed up and walked down. I presume lots of new snow tomorrow...making avalanches likely considering the top layer of 6" fluff.
We did see a few small cornice collapse avalanches today, but nothing serious. The big snow bown was rounded and tbere was a skier going down it 3 to 4 times throughout the day.
As I said earlier pics and video to follow
Mike Stringer