Adventures in Scotland: Day 4 - I'm an idiot

Only a short one today.

It's our (well-earned) day off, so we had a lie in, a hearty breakfast and shot into Fort William with the single-minded task of sourcing Charlie the brightest, lariest pair of softshell trousers possible. Now, before I go on I must say that Fort William is quite probably the most depressing place in the world. It's uniformly grey, there's absolutely no colour and it's just...bleak. The kind of place you get into and out of as quickly as possible. The place doesn't even have a coffee shop, to Charlie's extreme dismay.

We didn't get lairy softshells, but Charlie did get a rather loud Haglofs midlayer, which he was very pleased about. He hasn't yet shut up about it.

We got back to the B&B, and after planning our final climb on Friday (conditions being good, we're looking to do No.3 Gully on the north face of Ben Nevis) and started to sort our kit out. I went to file down the pick on my ice axe when I discovered that one of the bolts that hold the pick to the handle had...gone. Fallen out at some point, probably from being under-tightened. So bugger.

Thankfully it's not the crux bolt, so in an emergency I could climb on it, but I really don't want to be climbing up No.3 gully with a wobbly ice axe pick. It's hard enough without worrying about the positioning of a specific axe. So tomorrow morning, before we go for a spot of indoor pure ice climbing at the National Ice Climbing Center, we're headed to Jewsons to pick up a pack of bolts. It's odd how rare stubby M8 bolts seem to be in Scotland. I've got to buy a pack of 100 bolts, to replace one for a short period. Got to love this economy.



Bugger.



(The Adventures in Scotland series is a collection of all my posts from my first foray into winter mountaineering. Find all the others here)