Cumming (Cr)ofton

Last Monday Duncan and I undertook the epicly long walk in the mighty Garbh Coire of Beinn a'Bhuird aka 'The most remote coire in the Highlands™'. It was quite a long way, 30kms round trip. Typically as we started on Monday evening it started to snow and continued for the all the two and half hours it took us to reach our camping spot. Putting up your tent in a blizzard is never that much fun, especially when you stuff the inner right at the bottom of your pack.



A quick call to our weatherman at the 'crucible of pysche' (Banff Crescent) revealed an 80% chance of cloud free munros and light winds for the following day. Clearly Geoff has got a sense of humour as when we woke up the next morning it was still snowing and as we tramped up to the Sneck (the col that gives access to the coire) the bitter north wind freshened considerably, blowing lots of loose snow into our faces and providing a free exfoliation.
The two routes we had in mind were the uber 4* classics of Mitre Ridge (V,6) or the slightly harder Cumming Crofton (VI,6). We settled on the latter, a soaring corner line that dissapeared up into the mist and according to the guidebook 'a superb, sustained and technically hard winter route, a highly prized ascent, ' rock on.







The first pitch (the picture in the new cairngorms guide) was the crux, involving some hard moves past a jammed flake that took me while to figure out. Duncan then did a short pitch back into the main corner line, he also managed to drop the large wires which made the rest of the route a little bolder. The next pitch was the best I've climbed all winter, sustained bridging up a steep corner line with just enough gear and slightly worrying rippy neve, absolutely stellar stuff.



We then reached a col at the bottom of the top half of Mitre Ridge, which we followed to the top. The weather throughout had been vile, with spindraft billowing up and down the crag that continually lacerated the eyes. Then, just as we topped out the clouds parted and the sun came out, revealing the Southern Cairngorms in all their glory. It made the 4 hour walk back to car slightly more pleasnt (definitely take bikes if you go there).
All in all a fantastic place to climb, wild (saw nobody for two days), remote and majestic.

Went to North Wales at the weekend for Susie's birthday which was fun and debauched, but managed to squeeze a routr in at Gogarth and also got scared witless on a VS at Tremadog.
Endured the purgatory that is travelling on a Virgin West Coast train on Easter Sunday and eventually made it to Dalwhinnie at 1230 am where I slept in the car in blizzard. Up at sparrows fart for a route on the Ben with Gaz, climbed Minus 2 Gully (V,5) in a bitter North wind, great climbing and very cold. Off to Beinn Bhan in a hour or so with Tony and Kiwi Steve.





Photos courtesy G.Marshall