I spent the run up to Christmas with Ken ice climbing in Switzerland. The Alpkit budget wouldn’t stretch to a nice warm guest house so we made do with a tent instead. Despite sleeping 4 nights at temperatures below -10 we survived with all 10 toes intact to bring back this mini video diary.
Here are just a few nuggets of information from the trip:
- Putting on and off snow chains is best done with no gloves on, better to have cold hands for five minutes than wet gloves for the rest of the trip
- You cannot stop condensation in a tent, you just have to live with it
- Chocolate milk shake powder doesn’t make hot chocolate
- Don’t believe cooking times on packets
- Snow tires are a good idea, as is decent antifreeze
- Sometimes if you can’t understand somebody it might be because they are speaking a different language to the one you were expecting
- New crampons do not improve your foot work