In my previous blog post I described the first half of the week I spent in Scotland (click here) and this is how the rest of the week went now I am back at home after a long drive back from Fort William.
Wednesday was a wash out due to heavy rain all day causing severe weather warnings to be issued for the western highlands so we stayed at the house for most of the day apart from half an hour when we headed out to the loch near the house we were staying in and in the process of doing that got soaked!
The weather did however improve on Thursday so we headed out for another attempt at Aonach Mor but this time via a gully on the western side of the ridge but due to a lack of snow in the gullies from the warm conditions we ended up just doing an improvised scramble up to the top which was great fun and challenging in a few places but not before we practised some glissading on a small patch of snow we found in the valley. When we got to the top we were greeted by our first view of the week that wasn’t cloud coloured and it was beautiful! From the top we glissaded down the snow that was left on the northern face which was extremely fun!
On the last day the forecast was better again so a group of seven of us headed up the Aonach Eagach ridge which is regarded as the narrowest ridge in the UK and after a slog up heading into cloud as we reached the start of the ridge we realised we were near the top of the cloud and it kept partly clearing leading to extremely atmospheric conditions including broken spectres which are extremely rare. These conditions mixed with the amazing scramble along the ridge lead to one of the best mountain days out I have had in ages, though it was slightly odd as we headed to Scotland for a week of winter mountaineering and ended up scrambling along a ridge that was above 900m in t-shirts!
The day we drove home the weather was the best we had had all week as it was crystal clear blue skies so got the chance to see the ridge in all its glory from the bottom and get a few landscapes on the drive home. It has been an amazing week and I can’t wait to go back to Scotland and get back up in the mountains!
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