Author: Dominic Oughton

Great News! We’ve beaten off stiff competition from Netflix and Amazon Prime to bring you the EXCLUSIVE first screening of Season 3 of the Virtual Rucksack Club Slideshows. “Season 3” will start in January and will be beamed live into your living rooms on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month – Here’s the draft running order as it stands at the moment: January 11 – A Moroccan Double Bill featuring A Bill & Dom’s Excellent Adventure in Taghia and a chance to Rock the Kasbah in the Anti Atlas January 25 – A trip up the North Face of the Matterhorn (a.k.a. Le Grand Toblerone) with Dave Sykes and Stan Halstead February 8 – Desert Climbing in SW USA featuring the iconic Moonlight Buttress along the way with Jane Gallwey and Sam Simpson February 22 – The Life and Times of The Anabasis Mountaineering Club – A 60 year adventure with a Happy Ending with Dave Atkinson and guest stars March 8 – An Alpine Apprenticeship – A journey from MUMC Fresher to the Summit of The Matterhorn with Molly Worth March 22 – Mystery Guest – (ie I haven’t pinned anyone down yet, but there’s plenty of[…]

This year’s calendar has just arrived back from the printers and it’s another visual feast! Featuring over 60 Rucksackers either in front of or behind the lens, it’s a great reflection of a year in the life of The Club. Almost every photo is taken from the equivalent month of the previous year (with a few exceptions, mostly due to Lockdown restrictions) and feature the whole gamut of Club activities. There are members in action on crags, hills and mountains; climbing, mountaineering, bouldering, fell-running; kayaking and paddle-boarding amongst other things. From the Matterhorn to the Old Man of Stoer; from E9 limestone to VDiff seacliff; and running the Joss Naylor Challenge to a snowy walk with the dog! As an added feature this year, the calendar also includes a reminder of some of the key meets for the coming year (no excuses for missing Gogarth 2022)! There’s something for everybody, and the best thing is that thanks to the generosity of The Rucksack Club and some of its individual members, every penny of the purchase price will go to support Climbers Against Cancer in funding research around the world. That’s right – think of it as making a £10 charity[…]

Following the success of the 2021 Rucksack Club Calendar (we raised over £3,000 for Urban Uprising – check out https://www.thebmc.co.uk/rucksack-club-and-urban-uprising-team-up-for-2021-calendar as well as generating great publicity for The Club) we’ve decided to go again for 2022. This year we are raising funds for Climbers Against Cancer (CAC) https://www.climbersagainstcancer.org/ Through the worldwide climbing community, CAC aims to increase awareness and raise funds for research in the continued fight against a disease that affects so many. Climbers Against Cancer is a non-profit organisation, with all proceeds donated directly to cancer research facilities throughout the world. More than 50 Rucksack Club members contributed photos last year (either in front of or behind the lens) which is a brilliant advert for the vitality of The Club – Many thanks to everyone who took part (and of course to those who bought one!) We need your photos again this year. Ideally these will feature a Club Member or Associate Member in a relevant outdoor activity (last year we covered climbing, mountaineering, hill-walking, fell-running, MTB, bouldering, ice-climbing, ski-touring, caving and even unicycling! What more ways to ‘Get Out There!’ can we come up with?) Extra points for shots of people in a CAC T-shirt! I’m hoping[…]

Message from Will Poulett (Rucksack Club member and president of Durham University Mountaineering Club.) On the 29th and 30th of July we are running a first aid course with the North East Ambulance Service which has all the necessary training for ML/RCI/CWI qualifications. The course is 8 hours on both the Thursday and the Friday of that week – taking place in Maiden Castle in Durham. The cost of the course is £90 which is partially subsidised by our club. As it stands we have quite a few free spaces as we had to postpone the course from its original date due to Covid issues, would anyone here be keen to participate? It is a fantastic opportunity and quite cheap compared to other courses. If you have any questions or would like to sign up please drop me a message. Contact details in handbook.

Helen and I have organised a Rucksack Club meet at Gogarth every year for the last two decades, or at least we had done until last year when we had to make do with a zoom version. https://test.rucksackclub.org/2020/06/16/virtual-gogarth-meet-report/ Delays to the final step of the unlocking roadmap meant that hopes for a return to the usual 70plus attendance will have to wait until 2022, but we were thankful that at least 30 of us could make our way over the Menai bridge and onwards to Holy Island and the climbing mecca that is Gogarth. … Not that things were looking very encouraging as we crossed the Welsh border on Saturday morning – typical Gogarth weather conditions (ie pi$$ing down on the way over) … had people wondering if they’d have been better off among the 30 on the standby list. It wasn’t until Holyhead Mountain was almost in view that the magical microclimate clicked in and things perked up – oh ye of little faith! The paddling team (Gary, Gareth, Rachel and Rem) had already set off, but the climbers were sensibly waiting for the crag to dry, tucking into bacon butties – laid on for us specially by the[…]

It’s only a month to go until the Gogarth Meet and I’ve been holding off this update because potential restrictions are still a bit unclear. Wales has recently announced that groups of up to 30 can meet outside from 7th June (which has been the case in England for a while) and larger numbers are potentially allowed as part of a “Regulated Gathering” which includes team sports. There will be further updates in both Wales and England before the meet, which could result in fewer (or conceivably more) restrictions. The Gogarth Meet is usually a pretty laid back affair (I normally cater for about twice the number of people who book because most of you don’t bother to tell me or leave it for a last-minute weather check – oh ye of little faith!) Unfortunately, this year we’re going to have to be a bit more organised and ask you to confirm that you are coming ASAP – in the event that we do need to restrict numbers it will be on a “first-come, first-served” basis. We’re booked into the Valley of the Rocks campsite as usual, but again they’ve asked me to confirm numbers given the likely “stay-cation” pressure[…]

It’s the end of the Lockdown 2 Zoom Season, and we’ve saved the best til last – it’s only a shame that tomorrow night’s show will be too late to feature in this year’s Oscars! Brian Cunningham will be sharing highlights of a lifetime of adventure: 27 April 7:30pm: Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone, Brian Cunningham The Zoom details are the same as usual: https://zoom.us/j/91271240405 Meeting ID: 912 7124 0405 Passcode: The year of founding of The Rucksack Club

Last Wednesday more or less coincided with the 12 months anniversary of the last official Rucksack Club meet, so it was great to be able to “Get Out There!” again under the auspices of the first official post-Covid Meet. As this was convened in line with the guidance of the BMC (the sport’s governing body) the “Rule of Six” doesn’t apply and about a dozen of us enjoyed the traditional Wednesday Evening Meets curtain raiser at Hobby – and what a stunning evening! Clear blue skies and temperatures into the 20s made for shirtless climbing and much lazing and banter (all at a distance of 2m+)Here’s Evening Meets supremo, John, sporting the “Get Out There!” T-shirt and surveying the fun:Chris cruising Crew’s Route:… and me sketching up Sunshine Superman and feeling glad of the “early season side-runner” I’d felt obliged to place!Credit to the those in the Club who put the hard work into sorting and implementing the guidance (Andys x3, Joe and John) – it’s a potentially thankless task, so here’s a BIG THANK YOU.Cheers, Dom

Hi Everyone Following on from Gerry and Neil ‘Hitting The Heights’ with last week’s Hindu Kush story (now available for catch-up at:  https://vimeo.com/532558373), here’s a reminder for the last couple of shows in this season’s Virtual Meets: 13 April 7:30pm: The Life and Times of Doug Scott, David Nightingale 27 April 7:30pm: Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone, Brian Cunningham The Zoom details for both are the same: https://zoom.us/j/91271240405 Meeting ID: 912 7124 0405 Passcode: The year of founding of The Rucksack Club I can also pass on that The Alpine Club’s ‘ClubCast’ season is coming to a close with their final ‘episode’ being this coming Tuesday (when we have a gap in our schedule) – They’ve invited us along to join the show: Alpine ClubCast 25 – Deatils and YouTube LiveStream link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFHI6ycRrRo Tuesday 6 April at 19:30 Nepal: The Wild West – Henry Edmundson, Becky Coles and Paul Ramsden The West of Nepal is one of the least explored areas in the Himalaya with hosts of unclimbed mountains over 6000 metres on the Tibetan frontier. Tonight we trace the origins in the 1960s of the trekking boom in Nepal, which came full circle for Henry Edmundson[…]