Terms of Endearment & Pateys

Great day today on the above routes. I was working for Cairngorm Adventure Guides with Loui and Anne. Alladins buttress as very busy first thing and then cooled off.

 

Intro Winter Climbing

IntroWinter Climbing for Glenmore Lodge this week with James and Damien and at last a decent weeks weather.

Day 1 - Skills and Mountaineering in Coire Sneachda before climbing up and onto the Fiacaill Ridge.
Day 2 - Fiacaill Couloir before abseiling off due to a change in the weather.
Day 3 - Cha-No, a sunny warmer day, Jenga Gully and Anvil Gully.
Day 4 - Original Route Summer
Day 5 - Honour Amongst Thieves

 

 

 

 

Learn to Lead

At last a week of better weather but there are still very large cornices around. I was working for Glenmore Lodge this week with Charlie and Cathal.

Day 1 - Winter Mountaineering skills before climbing some short routes on the Ciste Crag.
Day 2 - Cha No - Anvil Gully IV before the guys were let loose on grade I ground around Dukes Rib.
Day 3 - Fiacaill Ridge from Sneachda col before abseiling off.
Day 4 - Local day around Glenmore covering weather, avalanche, planning, anchor set up, abseiling, escaping the system and then some dry tooling on the towers.
Day 5 - Twin Ribs in 4 pitches before abseiling off.

Great week and great company!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intro Winter Climbing

Groundhog Day, The Day After Tomorrow..... frustrating, stressful, possibly could sum up this weeks work. Continual stormy weather, high avalanche risk and the fact that nearly all of the "normal" climbing venues in the Northern Corries are buried, they dont have safe access or have massive cornices above them. I was working for Glenmore Lodge this week.

Day 1 - Fiacaill Ridge
Day 2 - Ciste Crag
Day 3 - Abandoned just below Lurchers as the next storm system arrives early and kicks in.
Day 4 - Ciste Bowl, navigation, snow anchors and avalanche awareness training.
Day 5 - Twin Ribs

Although the avalanche forecast has dropped to Considerable, great care is still required. Lurchers is probably the only "safe" feeling normal winter venue.

Sneachda today, next weather system on its way

Safe travel accessing Twin Ribs

Intro Winter Climbing

I have been working for Cairngorm Adventure Guides for the last 5 days with Sharon and Matt. The ski hill was closed for most of this time due to the weather and we also had to work around a high avalanche risk. Ciste Crag on a wild survival day, Twin Ribs on our avalanche day, Cummingston rock climbing, Fiacaill Ridge on our one and only good weather day and back to Cummingston today for more rock climbing, thats sometimes the way it goes. Pictures below of our good weather day.

West Coast Mountaineering

A great 4 days with returning group Walkers with Altitude. Based in and around Fort William we had a challenging time both with the weather and the high avalanche forecasts. Day 1 was spent traversing the Buachaille Etive Beag which had an alpine snow arete on the south ridge, a damp day. Day 2s forecast was worse, so we headed to the Ice Factor where we spent the day looking at climbing steeper stuff on rock and ice. Day 3, was named ballistic day but turned out to be the opposite and we had a great afternoon hit on Creag Meagaidh;s north ridge taking in Sron Coire A Chriochairein and the edge of Cairn Liath. Yesterday, plan A was to ascend the east ridge of Carn Mor Dearg from the Nevis Range gondola but we found the connecting glen too hard going with soft deep snow so we ascended a safe west face rib bringing us out level with the quad chair, great wee route on mountaineering ground.

    

 

  

Winter in Full Swing

Its been a busy 3 weeks since New Year mostly working for Glenmore Lodge, Learn to Lead, Winter Mountaineering, Winter Skills and a hill and safety course with Arqiva who look after the TV and Radio masts countrywide.

Conditions up on the Cairngorms are in full swing with an amazing cover above 750m very similar to what we had back in 2010, even although its not been very cold low down, the continuous low pressure systems have been packing the snow in.

It was snowing heavy this afternoon above 900m with still strong SE winds. The climbing routes in the corries were buried at the start of the week so id say there may be even less rock showing now, maybe everything will become grade I.

A few photos below of today and the last few weeks.