Blog Posts in Category: Winter Climbing

After a stormy day on Wednesday everything was a bit avalanche prone so any climbing decisions had to be taken carefully, and as the weather was also pretty bad on Thursday I decided to head to Dorsal Arete early to complete a quick route and be off the hill before the wind picked up more in the afternoon. This however meant another early start and again I was at the car park in Glencoe by 7am. The walk up to Stob Coire nan Lochan was very wet and warm which lead to a dilema, trust softshell or put waterproofs on and sweat. Unfortunately I chose to assume the rain would be a shower and trust the softshell, however this was a mistake and I ended up with a pretty damp softshell top by the time I put my waterproof on and by the end of the day my legs were soaking. We quickly arrived in SCNL and kitted up with surprisingly we had good views and even sore the summit of SCNL, however this was short lived and while I was on the first pitch the cloud came back in, wind picked. Read the full article…

My main aim for this trip was to do on this trip was a winter traverse of the Aoanach Eagach, however I was willing to wait until the conditions were right as I didn’t want to not enjoy what looked like it should be a fantastic mountaineering day out. Thankfully the conditions didn’t disappoint and with the forecast for Tuesday being brilliant we made the decision to go for it. After a 5:30 alarm we made it to the carpark or 7am and started the slog up to Am Bodach in the dark and made it to the top within two hours, unfortunately this early speed was not going to be kept up! The conditions were not quite as good as forecast but they were still fantastic, with a high cloud base, clear skies and not much wind and this lead to fantastic views all the way along the ridge. I climbed the ridge with Hannah and Ruth, however as they were both inexperienced having only done Number 4 gully in the past I was guiding them along so we spent a lot of time moving together on a rope. Read the full article…

The weather forecast on Monday was pretty good and suggested that the lower summits should be free of cloud and that there may even be some sunny spells so most of our group were heading to do Stob Ban via the East Ridge before heading along the ridge to Mullach nan Coirean, a walk which I did last new year in hill fog and gale force winds. I was planning on heading to Aonach Mor again with Jon to do some ice climbing, however after the fail of the previous day this time we had a backup plan which was the East Ridge of the North Buttress of Stob Ban, a grade II/III route depending on how closely you followed the ridge. Again we got to the gondola station to find them on hold due to wind and after a coin toss we waited until 9am when they were reviewing their status. This turned out to be pointless as at 9am they reviewed and were shut until midday so we changed to our backup plan. As we were not optimistic about them opening we re-packed our bags removing the ice. Read the full article…

Last week I was up in Scotland for a week, the intention was to go winter climbing but after stunning and really hot weather the two weeks before we headed up there was very little ice left so the prospect of doing any winter climbing was looking very unlikely. However due to a sudden change of weather over two days, from having a BBQ on the first evening then on Tuesday morning we woke up to several inches of fresh snow and freezing temperatures, this mixed with a northerly wind quickly sent Ben Nevis back to great winter conditions on the easier routes such as Gardyloo Gully. Armed with a positive weather & avalanche report from SAIS stating that on the northern aspects there was a low avalanche risk due to the northerly wind scouring the faces we made the decision to get up early and head up the north face of Ben Nevis. We  headed up to the CIC hut very early leaving the car at 7am and got to the CIC hut less than two hours later where we had to hide from the bitter wind as the weather forecast was not. Read the full article…