UKC

Looks like Gavin Dale has just taken the winter BG record in under 15 hours. Wow! 

Finlay Wild's "Dark BG" was and still is a bit special/ unique/ bonkers though.

Is it actually wintery conditions in the Lakes at the moment?

No

The BG club say that winter starts on December 1st. So the first few days of December generally see a flurry of BG attempts.

Bit daft really, isn't it?

You flog your guts out and get a record, but what does it really mean?

It should obviously only count if at least 50% of it is easier with crampons on.

Jeez.

The BG Club use the same "definition" for winter as the Met Office, basically the months of December, January and February.

But just because it's defined as "winter" doesn't mean that Dickensian scenes of 100% snow cover are prevalant or even likely, it's just an arbitrary set of dates that may or may not be wintry. There's definitely not much daylight. Completely contrary to this, I've experienced snowfall on the summit of Blencathra on midsummer's day!

Blimey, have I stumbled into an episode of Grumpy Old Men?

Congrats to Gavin on the new record.

To be fair that goes for a lot of what we do

Yeah, good point. But it's the all or nothing distinction between Nov 30 and Dec 1 that seems fairly ridiculous. I understand that a winter challenge is more taxing because of the conditions, so it seems odd that a winter challenge record could be set when the conditions aren't at all wintry. I guess it's a bit like climbing a hard winter route when it's all banked up and much easier, or indeed soloing a hard grit route above a cushion of deep snow. Would such an ascent qualify as the hardest solo?

It's very arbitrary, but then again so is the whole concept of "rounds".

It would be nice if a winter round had to exceed some kind of wintry conditions criteria, but I can't think of how you'd easily set that criteria.

Going off simple things like temperature or snow/ice does rather allow some not that freakish conditions to be classified as winter when it definitely isn't winter.

Also, the criteria would have to be so that you would know at the start whether it was going to be a winter round - hardly fair if you got most of the way round to discover that it'd unexpectedly warmed up or whatever.