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…

With the weather forecast to be better today, and the best day for the forceable future, we decided to head up Ben Nevis and see if we could find something to climb. Due to not knowing what we were doing we ended up taking in a full rack, of which we used very little… However, as there were three of us the weight was distributed well. The weather in the morning was horrible, for almost the entire walk up to the CIC hut we were in the wind and fairly heavy rain, which meant that by the time were were there we were feeling pretty miserable and seriously considered bailing on the whole idea. After some motivation from me once my hands warmed up we decided to carry on up into Coire na Ciste, this was very hard going for the person breaking the trail, with drifts up to waist deep in places! Once we got near to the base of number 5 gully we made the decision that we didn’t want to continue any higher into the coire due to it being very hard going and the avalanche risk. Read the full article…

Having arrived in Scotland late last night after a very long drive up, we were determined to do something today despite the forecast of a high freezing level, strong winds and constant precipitation for a few hours.We decided to head up the Zig Zags on Gearr Aonach in order to head into Stob Corrie nan Lochan in order to get an idea of what the snowpack was looking like.After a short walk up we soon arrived at the snowline which was at around 350m. The route was fun, with a good cover of soft snow which meant that winter kit wasn’t needed until near the top. It was a bit of a slog up from the top of the Zigzags to the summit of Gearr Aonach, however the views up Glencoe were fantastic! Once we got to the summit, it was pretty hard going all the way along the ridge due to the soft snow. However once we approached Corrie nan Lochan a crust started to appear on the snow. We had planned on heading to the other side of the corrie and looking at the snow there, however once. Read the full article…