Category: Member Posts

Don’t forget Episode 4 of Season 2 of the Lockdown Slideshows – John Warburton is going to guide us down The Gouffre Berger. This famous French cave discovered in 1953 was long regarded as the deepest cave in the world at −1,122 metres. Tuesday 16 February (doors open at 7pm with the show starting at 7:30) Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/91271240405 Meeting ID: 912 7124 0405 Passcode: Year of founding of The Rucksack Club …and a reminder that if you’d like to catch up on previous episodes of the Virtual Lockdown Slidshows, they’re all available here: https://test.rucksackclub.org/virtual-meet-gallery/ – Truly binge-worthy Box Set viewing! Cheers, Dom

The Pinnacle Club is 100 years old this year. So, to celebrate its centenary, the Club is (tentatively) planning to run a week-long women’s trad climbing meet in Snowdonia, open to up to 100 women climbers who are experienced and competent at multi-pitch trad, at whatever grade: the Women’s Trad 100. The Women’s Trad 100 is running for the week of Saturday June 19 to Sunday June 27 2021 – Obviously you’ll all be at The Gogarth Meet for the first couple of days, but what better way to extend your North Wales experience than by joining the Trad 100 for the rest of the week? It will be based at the Snowdonia Parc campsite, Waunfawr, Snowdonia. The meet will have exclusive use of the entire campsite, which also has an on-site pub serving food and with its very own brewery. Climbers can join the meet for the whole week or any part of it. To get an idea of what it might be like, see the write-up of the women’s international climbing meet that the Pinnacle Club ran in 2016. The hope is that, by late June, restrictions will have lifted enough for the meet to be a proper[…]

Jon is a fully qualified UIAGM guide as well as an Associate Specialist in Anaesthetics at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. He is also an incredibly accomplished mountain “all rounder” – equally at home in rock shoes, trainers and ski boots! His achievements are wide ranging and have recently included an unsupported winter run of the Bob Graham Round and completing the classic Chamonix – Zermatt ‘Haute Route’ ski tour unassisted in just over 30 hours! For many years Jon has highlighted the planet’s climate emergency and has gone to great lengths to minimise his own impact upon the environment. So, ‘stay in there‘  and hear about how he’s done this and the difference you can make in what promises to be a fascinating talk. You need to reserve a place before the lecture begins, by going to the following link: https://mountainmedicine.7thwave.io/blog/2457

We’ve raised over £3,000 to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to discover the life-enhancing world of climbing! A huge thank you to everyone who has generously supported this great cause. Here’s a nice thank you message from the folks at Urban Uprising. https://www.facebook.com/UrbnUprising/posts/3263458263759371 Great achievement by The Rucksack Club – It’s not too late to push for £4k though – https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/dominic-oughton Cheers, Dom

Don’t forget Episode 3 of Season 2 of the Lockdown Slideshows – Joe Fisher is going to lead us along a winter traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on Skye – widely recognised as ‘one of the finest mountaineering expeditions in the UK’ as well as amongst the most sought after. Tuesday 2 February (doors open at 7pm with the show starting at 7:30) Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/91271240405 Meeting ID: 912 7124 0405 Passcode: Year of founding of The Rucksack Club

As promised, the January segment of ‘2021 – The Year in Pictures’ has just been published (many thanks to Ian Helliwell for the technical bits!). Published alongside it, is a gallery called ‘This Time Last Year’ which contains a handful of shots taken in January in years gone by. Obviously, it is not restricted to last year, so start looking at your snaps from Januarys and Februarys past for me to include in this particular gallery. Also looking forward to seeing your exploits from this February in due course!

Following on from my previous post, the 2021 Year in Pictures Gallery will be published over this weekend. Some people have sent pictures from last year or even earlier. No problem at all – I’ve put them in the Gallery for you all to look at. However, it got me thinking – why not have a gallery for this kind of retrospective picture? So – I’ve made a new gallery called ‘This Time Last Year ….’ and, for next month, I’d like you to start looking at the pictures you have taken in February, in whatever year. This gallery will run in parallel to the main one and they will both will be published at the end of each month. Please remember to rename the pictures and send them as attachments. Thanks.

I’m just putting the finishing touches to the ‘January’ pictures. Thanks to all those who have sent me their snaps. My ‘copy date’ for any other contributions for January is tomorrow, Friday 29th. A plea – before you send them to me, do 2 things:- 1. Rename them with your title/caption. That way, I don’t have to start reconciling a string of numbers that appear below the picture with a description provided in the email (or sometimes sent later): and 2. Send them as attachments to the email, and not in the body of the email. I don’t then have to ‘Save as’ and put them in an interim folder. I sound like I know what I’m doing, don’t I? But I’m still learning. Help me. Thanks Bill

Anyone interested in El Cap climbing or the way digital photography is enabling fantastically complex pictures to be produced should check this out.  Simply, gigapixel photography is done by taking thousands of photographs of a subject and stitching them together digitally to produce super high-resolution images that you can scroll into.  There’s an amazing one of The Nose that tracks climbers on every pitch…for anyone who has climbed it, you can relive the fun, pain and suffering! El Capitan Gigapixel Climbing Routes

I’m putting the January gallery together this week and will aim to go public on the 31st. I’ve got some pictures but would like some more! I know you have all been observing the rules but a lot of people in the Club live in or near the hills and mountains and will have been out for their daily exercise. Please send them to me (billdeakin@yahoo.com) with a caption. Thank you.