Blog Posts in Category: Scotland

With the snowpack still not stable on north through east facing aspects and a good day of weather forecast we decided to head over to the west face of Aonach Mor to climb Golden Oldy. It became clear in the morning that it wasn’t going to be as nice a day as forecast as the wind was pretty strong at the gondola station and it was snowing. The approach to Golden Oldy was really hard work due to deep snow with a murderous crust. By using the gps and a good set of directions we managed to find the start of Golden Oldy without any difficulty where we were met by three parties behind us and it was good to get some confirmation that we were at the base of the route. I soloed the entire ridge while Richard and David moved together alpine style. The conditions on the ridge were fantastic with mostly helpful snow however the weather was awful with lots of wind, spindrift and hill fog. As we approached the snow aretes towards the top of the ridge there was no exposed rock which made protection hard. Read the full article…

After 2 days of walking into crags with winter climbing gear, just to turn back around due to a mixture of bad weather and snow it was great to get out and actually climb something. We left the car at 8 and made quick time up to the coire as we made it up in 1hr20mins. It was a very pleasant walk in with little wind, no rain and even some frozen snow on the old footprints. We cautiously made our way up to the start of Twisting Gully however we turned back just before the gully entrance due to large accumulations of windslab. We then made a new plan, as we knew Mike Pescod climbed Raeburn’s route the day before we headed over to that and were soon at the initial chimney. The first pitch was absolutely fantastic with really interesting climbing, however the climbing was fairly insecure as there was lots of useless snow and almost no gear. It certainly got the adrenalin flowing at times as most of the 6 pieces I placed on a 50m pitch were just for my head… Andrew made quick work of. Read the full article…

I have just got back from another brilliant day out winter mountaineering in Scotland. Having left Torridon on Saturday and spent the last two days sat in Kyle of Lochalsh it was great to be out again. Our target was to climb the Saddle via the Forcan ridge and then climb Sgurr na Sgine before descending via another ridge. The weather in the morning was dry and bright with the tops just below the cloud base, the walk in was a slog but was quickly over and was made better due to the fantastic views we had. Once we got to the snow line our progress slowed due to plenty of soft wet snow, however we finally arrived at the start of the ridge. As we ascended the Forcan Ridge the snow kept improving and there was some great neve at higher altitudes, the ridge was good fun however never challenging. I was surprised to find a fixed rope at the abseil half way along the ridge, I made use of this as a handline and downclimbed which was fun before Andrew abseiled down after me. Unfortunately we we were climbing. Read the full article…

We were lucky enough to get another good weather forecast so headed out for another fantastic day in the hills. Due to having an injured shoulder I abandoned my plans to climb on Beinn Eighe and decided to go mountaineering and join some of my friends on a traverse of Beinn Alligin. In the end we were three groups of four and apart from a holdup after the first horn stayed as separate groups all day. We managed to end up being the last group out which meant a lie in which was very appreciated. On the drive over I was a tad concerned that it might not clear as it was drizzling with a low cloud base, but it started to look more optimistic as we drove down the Torridon valley with moonlight reflecting off the loch. As we were ascending up to the first horn the weather kept improving and we stayed below the cloud base for most of the day. We overtook the middle group on the ascent and just after the third horn we overtook the second group as we were making pretty good time so. Read the full article…

My alarm went off again at 4:30 which was a start of another day climbing on Liathach. The walk in was significantly easier than yesterday due to the snow being frozen so we made quick time and were in the corrie in just over 2hrs. On the walk in the weather was quite nice, however it deteriorated throughout the day. Our objective for the day was George and I was climbing with some university friends, we soloed up to the new steep step which has been generated by a rockfall. It is a very short section but was pretty steep for a grade III and certainly warrants tech 4 . After this step I ran it out up to into the cave which involved lots of digging to get into, and lots of digging to get out of. Due to rope drag and being out the wind we belayed from the cave which was a tad cramped with 3 people! The move out of the cave at the start of pitch 2 was amazing, having to back out of the cave blindly feet first onto a steep section of ice.. Read the full article…

This morning I met up with some friends from the Avon Mountaineering club and headed up to Liathach to climb the classic Poacher’s Fall. Due to the weather improving in the afternoon we decided to have a lie in and meet at the car park at 6 and accept the fact that we would be queueing. There were some showers first thing in the morning but they soon cleared and the cloud started to lift above the tops. We had a very atmospheric, but hard going walk in with plenty of wet snow low down and unconsolidated snow in the coire. Once we arrived in the coire we were pleased to see only one other team heading up to Poacher’s, which meant that we wouldn’t be queueing too much. The ice on the route was fantastic, with first time placements all the way up the route, ice doesn’t get much better. On the first pitch some of the ice was a bit cruddy so protection was a bit limited. Due to having 60m ropes we ended up climbing all of the difficulties on the route in 2 pitches. The first. Read the full article…

After looking at the weather forecast Zack somehow persuaded me that it would be a good idea to get up early on new years day and drive over to the caingorms. So after being careful not to drink too much on Hogmanay we drive over to the Caingorms with 3.5hrs sleep! When we got to the car park I had a feeling we might be unsuccessful when we had to fully kit ourselves out to protect from the spindrift and wind, and this was at the car park! On the walk up we battled against the wind and the horrible melt-freeze crust on the wind scoured areas and eventually made it to the coire. The view behind us on the walk up was spectacular, snow covered mountains in the sun! Apparently a team headed up to Mess of Pottage but we couldn’t see them, another team had turned around in front of us due to the wind and we saw a few people on our way back down who thought they were going to get to the coire and turn back. Our conversation to decide if we were going to. Read the full article…