Today a group of manufacturers have issued new recalls on via ferrata lanyards. This is the second wave of recalls of this type of equipment in the last six months and relates to a different type of lanyards than in the first wave. The statements issued by the UIAA (the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation) and the manufacturers are clear that the issues with these particular lanyards are potentially fatal.
The UK’s first via ferrata is one of the Lake District’s biggest attractions but has also been one of its biggest sources of controversy in the last few years. How might these controversies, and the quality of the climb, affect your decision to pay to climb this via ferrata?
It was probably inevitable that when it opened in 2007 the first via ferrata in the UK would attract some strong opinions. The system of climbing a mountain using ladders, stemples and occasionally bridges, together with a metal cable to attach to so as to prevent a long fall, could be considered to be more at home in the Alps. Vie ferrate have their origins in the Alps and they seem more at home among the cable cars and ski pulls that dot those mountains. Yet a via ferrata had been constructed on Honister Crags to provide a way to climb from a little way above Honister Pass to just below the summit of Fleetwith Pike. Read more
I love rime. I love how these tails of ice seem to form on rocks, fences, walls, posts and anything bold enough to stand upright on a frozen, windy mountain. I love how rime’s strange, white crystalline structures seem to sprout from the dark surfaces of rocks to either bring them into relief or bury them in ice. It amazes me that rime can form as a razor of ice down one side of a single blade of grass and as an icy lattice inches deep on a wire fence. What I especially love about rime is how it adds a new beauty and character to these small things as well as to a whole mountain landscape. Rime is also wonderful for being something that is superficially simple – frozen water – that forms from an interesting process into something varied and complex. Read more
