The Last Month Or So

Been out here and there in the last few weeks, before the early December cold snap broke down in the middle of the the month managed to climb the excellent Inclination (VII/7) in Stob Coire Nan Lochan with Konnie and Viv, Route I with the direct start (VI/6) on the Ben with Konnie and the nails Genie (V/7) in Sneachda with Steve (along with some airtime on my part).
Ironically the very cold few weeks we've just had in Scotland weren't brilliant for winter climbing as there had been quite a major thaw previously and during the cold snap the weather was very dry. A week ago on Saturday I made the long (4hrs) slog into Braeriach with Konnie and Gaz to climb the icy Vulcan (V/4) in Garbh Coire Mor, supposedly the snowiest place in Britain. An awesome, wild and deserted place but quite a long way to go for two pitches of climbing. At the top I had to deal with a 7 metres of horrific vertical sugar above less than convincing runners and belay, it eventually succumbed to over an hour of character building tunneling after convincing myself that I was Colin Haley on a top rope.

No.4 Buttress, Coire an Lochain

Fallout Corner

Despite the warm and windy forecast, last Friday the conditions in Coire an Lochain were excellent with all the buttresses nicely hoared and the temperatures below zero even if the wind was fairly savage... Viv and climbed the classic Fallout Corner (VI/7) that provided a couple of pitches of very well protected climbing, maybe a touch overrated though and very soft for the grade. I would have no complaints if it was given V/7 and definitely easier than the Genie.

The wild (and very snowy) Garbh Coire Mor

Gaz leading pitch 1 of Vulcan

Konnie about to enjoy his hotaches

Christmas Lunch

Stobbers looking good on the way in

Look, no feet!

Viv on pitch 2

Pitch 3

Job done

A wintery Ben Nevis

Route I direct start

Kenny Grant on Route II

Konnie enjoying the rebirth chimney

Full moon

The Alt a'Mhuillin by Moonlight

Steve styling up pitch 2 of The Genie

Winter Continues

I must have walked up the Ben path in winter at least twenty times in winter but I've never seen it quite like it was on Saturday. It was clearly going to bright and chilly day, the car thermometer read a toasty -8 at Dalwhinnie and had warmed up to a positively balmy -2 at the north face car park as we started to walk up. There was a good covering of snow to sea level and all the pine trees on the initial path were plastered in snow. It felt more like walking along a wooded track in the Alps rather than a dank forest path on the West Coast of Scotland. Luckily some kind souls had blazed a trail in already, so we were spared the purgatorial thigh deep wade that I was dreading.

Carn Dearg

The mighty north face of Carn Dearg looked absolutely plastered in snow so we decided that it would be silly not take advantage of this and we made a beeline for Route One. Unfortunately there was a team already at the start but they had decided not climb as the turf looked pretty unfrozen. We thought we'd check it out so I soloed up a bit to test a couple of lumps, all of which were resolutely soggy, bugger.

South Trident Buttress - Slab Climb is the obvious slab high up

I wasn't particularly psyched by the wade up in the Ciste but walking slowly has its advantages and Gaz and Konrad kindly improved the trail ahead of me. Plan B was to to try Slab Climb (VI/7) on South Trident Buttress. Luckily Ian Parnell and Andy Benson were making the first winter ascent of Devastation, an E1 just to the left of our route so there was a good set of tracks to the bottom of the route.

Gaz on the first pitch

Due to the amount of faffage we didn't start climbing until twelve, Gaz led off on the first pitch whilst Konnie and I played paper, scissors, stone to decide who got the meat of the route, the 40m slab that made up the second pitch. I won.

Getting Dark...

Once Gaz had a set up a slightly iffy looking belay we moved across and I stared up at the slab. It looked fairly intimidating and once I started up I realised it was pretty verglassed as well. The route climbs a crack in the slab to an overlap then transfers left to another crack and then up. I spent a while at the beginning trying to get a wire in and once I'd done this, I began to have serious commitment issues. Time was moving on rapidly, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get that many runners and the climbing looked hard and delicate. Eventually after moving up and down a few times I got so high there didn't seem much point in going down again so decided to press on.

Darkness

The climbing was absolutely stellar, really absorbing and technical but never pumpy. Alot of the small edges were covered in ice so I had to do a fair bit of chipping for footholds but once established the gear was great. The highlight was moving around the overlap. It felt a bit like the GBH window traverse, sidepulling of a big edge, then shuffling along a narrow foot ledge before grasping the sidepull on the other side. From here I reached the edge of the slab and had to make a tenuous move off a very small torque (just using the tip of the pick) to regain the crack. Once the halfway ledge was reached the climbing eased and I was soon on the small belay ledge.

Enjoying the Offwidth

It was now quarter to four and darkness was rapidly approaching, Gaz decided he was going to abb off and go down, but there was no way I was going to go down after the effort I'd just put in. Luckily Konnie was still keen and began to second the pitch with the headtorch coming into play half way up. The top pitch was a heinous looking overhanging chimney/offwidth disappearing into the night. It succumbed to alot of grunting from Konnie. It wasn't much fun to second with a pack in the dark but the rest of the pitch was good and we were soon on our way back to the car. None of the snow had melted and the car park was looking just as alpine as in the morning. We all decided that spending the night in a house in Aviemore was preferable to the car so back to Gaz's it was. Needless to say our psyche levels were low in the morning so after dropping the keen Kiwi and other Sam in the Coire Cas carpark we made a big fry up.





The midweek plan was to head to Lochnagar on Tuesday with Mike then possibly head somewhere else on Wednesday if motivation was high. After a frosty bivvy in the car which iced up on the inside, the day dawned frosty and clear as we trudged up the dreary road to the coire. There wasn't much snow around and we were slightly worried about the possibility of black cliffs but were pleasantly surprised by the view of a frosty crag, although there was minimal snow on the coire floor. We climbed Shadowlands (VI/7), a 'modern classic' that tackles the steep lower section of Shadow Buttress A. Not too sustained and a good, well protected crux pitch. By the time we topped out the weather had changed and it was almost dark, after a slight faff finding the Meikle Pap col and a walk out in heavy snow, psyche levels for a second day were low.

Shadowlands takes the right-left slanting corner that rises from the large cave on the central buttress

Mike Seconding the Crux Pitch

Mike on Pitch 4

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

Curate's Egg

Managed to squeeze in a couple of days climbing at the end of last week before I headed off to Rome this morning. On thursday Viv and I went to Stob Coire in Glencoe on a fairly unpleasant sounding forecast. It was less windy than we expected but didn't feel particularly cold and as it snowed most of the day we go quite damp by the end. Despite this, the crag was in spankingly good condition, covered in snow and rime and with brilliant turf and only one other party in the coire.



We decided to have a look at Scrabble, an VIII/7 that climbs Central Grooves for about 10m before breaking out in a very improbable way onto the left arete and then taking hanging corners above. After a serious amount of faffage Viv set off up the initial groove that looked both hard and not overly endowed with gear and I got settled in for a lengthy 3hrs+ belay session. Once established in the spectacular but precarious position of the arete, he decided that the liberal coating of verglas was making making further progress unenticing and so instead headed back into and up CG, after running the first two pitches together, it was my turn to flail my way up. The first few metres were a rude shock, involving a very burly move off a horizontal torque with little for the feet and then some thin bridging with little for the axes, I found it very hard and my arms were already blown after the first 15m. The second half of the pitch felt like more standard Stob Coire fare and had more positive hooks and torques but still wasn't liberally endowed with great footholds, often involving some very high steps on not a great deal.




By the time I reached the belay it was 4pm but the upper section looked a little more straightforward. Unfortunately the way was barred by a steep step that was effectively an unprotected boulder problem. I fannied around for a while, not really prepared to take the lob that would've probably left me below Viv and eventually we decided that climbing in the dark in a whiteout was a less attractive proposition than going back to Edinburgh for a ceildh so we bailed. The abseil down showed how steep the line was and the climbing is without doubt some of the most absorbing and the hardest I've done, definitely one to go back for.




Saturday morning saw Duncan, Konnie, Steve, Viv and I up early and bright eyed for a trip to Lochnagar, there wasn't a cloud in the sky at the Loch Muick car park and when we arrived at the Meikle Pap col in ferociuos winds I finally got to see the whole crag for the first time. It was absolutely plastered and buoyed up by the very loud Chemical Brothers, I was dribbling pysche by the time we reached the first aid box.



Duncan's knees were sore, so Konnie and I headed off to Parallel Buttress (VI,6) by ourselves. Konnie headed up the first pitch but after a couple of hours and having knocked down lots of snow only about 20m of a 280m route had been done, he shouted down that he wasn't very keen on continuing and given how buried the route looked we decided to bail and head for something easier. So far a combined total of about 5 and a half hours belaying had yielded about 45m of climbing in the last couple of days.



We headed for Moonshadow (V,5) on a subsidary buttress of Shadow A, Duncan had stayed in the Coire with Viv and Steve (who climbed Mantichore VII/7) and wandered over to join us on this, three 50m pitches of turfy and slightly icey but often quite bold mixed climbing was followed by the last easy part of Shadow Buttress A to the plateau, the route felt pretty soft for V but was enjoyable despite the wind picking up considerably near the top.



As we coiled the ropes, I turned to ask Duncan where his bag was, he turned to Konnie who didn't have it but said he'd wedged it between rocks at the last belay, Duncan soloed back down to look for it and then someone told him they'd seen a bag blow off. For some reason Konnie hadn't clipped it in (the words 'bear with very little brain' spring to mind) and it was now god knows where. This was slightly worrying as it had my bag inside it that contained my ipod, trekking poles and six ice screws plus both our headtorches (it was now 4.30).



As we headed back to Col, Konrad, partly as sole possessor of a headtorch, partly beacuse he would be the quickest and mainly cos it was his fault was sent back into the coire to search as we huddled under a boulder to shelter from the fairly savage breeze. Luckily some kind soul had found it and put it by the first aid box, so disaster was averted and we all lived happily ever after and returned to Edinburgh.