Scotland '15: venimus et nos vidimus fugerent

Roughly translated that means "We came, we saw, we ran away." Which is a pretty good summary of our last few days in Scotland.

Ed belays Charlie on a cheeky little 6a lead - I watched quietly

On Saturday (After I put up the last blog) we decided to take a jaunt over to Kinlochleven and check indoor ice climbing but we hadn't used the wall. Ed had also used the indoor ice wall before and we all fancied trying a bit of dry climbing after getting drenched looking for some Dry Tooling in Fort William. We decided that the only way to properly recover the day would be to try out the indoor climbing wall at the Ice Factor. Myself and Charlie had been there before last year on a day off to try the indoor ice climbing and Ed had been there with work, but none of us had tried the traditional climbing wall.

Myself and Charlie had climbing shoes - we'd somewhat anticipated this happening. Ed, on the other hand, didn't, and therefore had to climb routes (including, embaressingly enough for myself and Charlie a 6a+ lead that neither of us could manage) in approach shoes - glorified outdoor trainers really. Just as well he managed to get us in for free or we may have lynched him out of jealousy.

Sunday was going to be our last day in Scotland, and the weather report did not look favourable so we decided to head for the highest point in the hope of finding vaguely decent ice and snow condition - to the Ben it was.

Suffering at the CIC hut

We parked up and if I'm honest I was in low spirits - I had what was not quite a bad feeling, but as Charlie later put it 'neggy vibes' about the day. I didn't think we'd ever even make it to the bottom of Italian Climb as we were aiming - let alone climb it, back out and get down safely. So I set out from the North Face car park with what felt like an extremely heavy weight on my back that was a bit pointless. Nonetheless we pushed up and found that the bottom of the walk was rather warm, warm to the extent that I had my jacket undone to reveal just a baselayer with all the vents open and still I was sweating buckets, though I was keeping up with Charlie for the most part so I was at least putting in the effort.

As we came up the path to see Ben Nevis we could see that conditions weren't hot - it was covered in cloud and there were driving winds coming from the South. By the time we'd got to the snow line we were being battered by driven hail and 40mph+ winds. We did eventually make it to the CIC hut, after passing many annoyed European climbers (no doubt commenting to eachother "Zis is not at all like ze alps!") coming down the ascent path laden with gear.

Whiteout on the walk down from the CIC hut

We paused to take on liquid and food, and as we did we assessed the conditions. What we saw didn't impress us in the slightest. I voiced my concerns to the other two, who both readily agreed now that they were stationary and had mouths/eyes/necks rapidly filling with snow. So we backed off, again. And this time we got out of there fast - the weather was rapidly closing in on us and at one point we were in total whiteout with hail being driven into our faces - thank god for the sense of mind to bring goggles along.

One point of humor - we saw the SAIS guys coming up to the CIC hut to have a look at the
condition,and as they came up to us they took a snapshot of what I can only describe as the three most depressed and bedraggled looking people south of the Arctic circle. What's even more galling is the fact that the day we left it was a beautiful, picture-perfect Scottish winter's day. How terrible. I'm now back in my Girlfriend's flat back in Surrey, warm and dry. But I miss the mountains. It was a decent trip for the most part, but the backing off days were no fun.

We even got featured on the SAIS blog. We're basically famous now.

There's always next year.

Scotland '15: Two's company, three's a climbing party

Sorry this is up a day late - Friday was a late one for us, and Saturday has been a total write off! At least our hit rate is higher than last year's 4 withdrawals for 4 attempts...

Thursday was our day off - a well deserved and earned rest after two big days in the hills. We took it chill, picked up a couple of bits and bobs in Fort William and generally just relaxed. A stroke of luck hit us, however, for as Charlie went downstairs for his evening rollup, he ran into a friend from work lugging a pack into the B&B who, as it turned out, was taking a long weekend to go climbing in the Western Highlands.

I got to meet him the next morning, and after discussing the weather and the conditions he suggested we headed for a west-facing crag known as Beinn Udlaidh. The plan was to take the drive and walk in, and then see what was in condition, then head up or back off. Now, if you follow me on social media (and if you don't, you really should) you'll know that originally we'd planned to re-do Ruth on Aonach Mor and do a ski/bum-slide descent to the Nevis Range center. I don't know about Charlie but the idea of doing a new route, somewhere interesting and out of the range and of a different kind to what we'd done before was too good to pass up, so that ski descent will have to wait for another day.

Our view of Bienn Udlaidh as we came out of the tree line...

We took Ed's car (a much roomier vehicle when compared to Charlie's Mini) and made the 45-minute journey in about 40 minutes. After sorting gear out and slinging on packs we started the walk in - after being accosted by some very curious pigs - from well below the snow line. I'll admit here and now that I'm pretty unfit, or at least not as fit as I'd like to be and Charlie always seems to steam off in front of me and I plod along behind. But now this time we had Ed, who shares my lack of speed (though he's far fitter than me) so for once I had people to talk to for much of the walk in! Even so it was kind of soul-sapping, a constantly winding and climbing forest track with the next slope hidden by a corner, so by the time we topped out onto the plateau below the face my thighs were burning and I was sweating despite only wearing a base layer and shell.

...and our view about 10 minutes later of the same face.

We could see the face ahead of us - or rather the bottom shelf of the face, the rest covered by a thick, Sunshine Gully, an absolutely classic Grade III gully line.
low lying cloud. We still had to get to the bottom of it to see if it was in condition. I really hoped it was, I didn't want to get there then have to turn back because the mountain was in terrible condition. The approach walk was a bit of a slog - the entire plateau was crisscrossed with streams and little ditches hidden by an even layer of snow, so a lot of time was spent digging either myself or Charlie from waist-deep snow drifts. Eventually though we got to a safe bowl where we could gear up and have a hot wet. Once we had crampons and harnesses on and were tied into our ropes (Ed leading with both, Charlie on the pink and myself on the blue) we set off to the bottom of our route -

Charlie being fully attentive in belaying Ed on the first pitch of
Sunshine Gully

Ed led out the first pitch, with Charlie belaying and me milling about trying to look like I knew what I was doing. There was a bit of waiting around as Ed reached, then established his belay, brought up Charlie and only then was I brought up. This was repeated again for the second and third pitches (with a moment to sort out some very messy ropes on a slightly exposed second pitch belay) and soon we were all safely tied in to the belay at the bottom of the fourth (and final) pitch.

Me being brought up the second pitch, thankful to be moving

Charlie was to lead the final pitch, the only pitch with ice and turf to make it an actual mixed route rather than a simple snow climb. Unfortunately we weren't working in the greatest conditions - pictures of Sunshine Gully from other times and years shows a fourth pitch absolutely caked in beautiful blue water ice that clings like limpets to the rock. What Charlie faced on his lead was very thin, flaky ice that instead of accepting axe points and holding, was instead coming away in sheets and obscuring any irregularities in the rock that could be used to hook a crampon or axe point on to allow a move to be made. As such, he was very slow and methodical and due to the total lack of availability, unprotected for much of the pitch aside from the belay below and accross from him. Had he fallen, he would have swung a long way and possibly even pulled me and/or Ed off our belay stance - as I stripped the belay before I came up I found the screw that formed half the protection was rattling in its hole and wasn't really doing anything much - very confidence inspiring.

Ed leading out on the third pitch, setting his belay at the bottom
of the ice section

Thankfully though he cleared the rock band and hooked over the left shoulder of the gully, using the
well-frozen turf to great effect as he approached the last difficult section - the corner. Now, when I got to the corner as I followed Charlie's route up I was intimidated but I had a rope above me and Charlie in a bomb-proof belay stance that I knew I could totally rely on if I fell. Charlie had none of these, and yet managed to negotiate awful ice bulges and a total lack of real axe placements to get up and over the last real section of the climb. I managed it by burying my axes in the turf above the corner and levering myself around until I had a reasonable scramble up. It wasn't fun. Can't imagine what Charlie was thinking with nothing above him and nought but a shaky nut placed horizontally in line with him. To say 'a bit concerned' would probably be a gross understatement.

Charlie leading the final pitch - see how thin all the ice is, you
can see rock through it!

With the time taken to climb the pitch, then locate the belay and build it and bring up Ed, by the time I set off I'd been stood in the belay stance for an hour and a quarter, so I was very thankful to be moving. I scored lucky on the first difficult move: experimentally scraping my axe down the ice on the rock I found a solid nubbin I could hang my weight on which allowed me to lever myself up and over the ledge with relative ease. As I neared the corner I steeled myself and it took a bit of joshing myself up to get me to commit to the moves (made more difficult as my left hand had gone numb from cold) but eventually I was up and over and passed Charlie to drag the rope up to where Ed had got safe and was now donning a warm jacket and taking on board food and liquid. I pulled the rest of my rope up behind me and welcome Charlie with a well-deserved high five as we all took in the beautiful surroundings we were faced with at the summit - almost totally cloud free we could see for miles, the beautiful visage of Scottish winter around us.

Our summit selfie atop Beinn Udlaidh in remarkably clear
conditions

We sorted gear, took a cheeky summit selfie before heading back down the flank of the face in an effort to beat the storm clouds we could see coming from the South. As we retreated we encountered what I would describe as our first good condition - well packed snow that held our weight rather than collapsing underneath it and allowed for swift progress. We got down to the car in about an hour, after falling in snow a bit more, comparing Ed to Legolas (for his seeming ability to pass over shaky snow without trouble) and then a Polar Bear (when he fell into the snow and flailed around on his front as he struggled to stand) and me catching my trousers so well with my crampons I ripped a hole in the crampon-proof instep of my trousers. They were brand new, too.


So that's that. Three attempted routes, three successful climbs. Pretty good record for us.

Scotland '15: Ruth is not a Golden Oldy

I've learned three things today:
1 - It's really really easy to confuse one route with another on Aonach Mor's West Face
2 - Ski lifts are by far the best way to get up and down a mountain
3 - I really really really hate spindrift.

The view from the gondola on the way up. So much nicer

We were aiming for another west-facing route today, Golden Oldy on the west face of Aonach Mor
in the Nevis range. When we woke up the conditions looked lovely - still air, snowy mountain tops, low freezing level and, most importantly, no rain. So we left in high spirits (excepting my general ache from yesterday) for the Nevis Range Ski Center where we'd resolved, on finding out it was open, to skip the 5km walk-in and instead take a gondola up.

And oh boy was it the right decision. We could even see the path we'd have had to walk up from the slowly moving gondola and it was not a pretty sight. With how exhausted I was after our far shorter walk in, I was (and remain) very very glad that we swallowed the cost and took the lift. I'm now a strong proponent of every route in the country having a ski lift to it, if only for lazy bastards like me.

Jumping off at the ski resort we took the short walk across beautifully packed and smoothed snow until we hit the edge of the ridge, donned crampons, busted out an ice axe and headed down, following a group of about six climbers ahead of us. The walk took us about an hour to reach what we thought the bottom of the route was, but we could probably have done it quicker if I wasn't so unfit. I thought I'd improved over the winter but my legs and lungs beg to differ. Especially as the walk in was decidedly not flat - the route actually started about halfway up the slope so we had to slog up through alternating deep powder and rocky sections to where we could harness and rope up. It was terrible, but then we were on the route and everything was okay.

It looked like Golden Oldy. It was not. We didn't fancy walking
further. We did Ruth.

However, the route we ended up on wasn't the Golden Oldy we'd been planning to climb - we ended up on another Grade II, known simply as 'Ruth'. Chalk that one up to bad nav and oddly angled guidebook photos.

The route itself started out a little shakily as I followed the wrong tracks and had to backtrack quickly to catch up with an understandably irate Charlie. We quickly flaked the rope and Charlie got going, with an exclamation of 'OH YES!' as he buried his axes in some solidly frozen turf and headed up the route. I belayed him up, but quickly lost sight of him as he disappeared over a rocky crest and was left relying purely on feel. As soon as the rope started to pull through quickly I disconnected my belay plate, grabbed my axes and started up.

Charlie in his belay on the third pitch. He was very pleased
with this one.

It was glorious. Solid, frozen turf that accepted a solid swing of the axe with a reassuring 'thump', rocky ledges that served as perfect footholds, patches of deep water ice well bonded to lazily sloped rock that took crampon points beautifully. It was a lovely route, three full forty-meter pitches of purely enjoyable climbing. I was in high spirits as we set up the fourth pitch, but as Charlie crested the little ridge of rocks he found there was no further climbing. Looping the rope over my neck we trudged over the now far more exposed ridgeline which meant snow and wind blowing into my back.

When we stopped for lunch and I put away the rope, as I sat down to take a well-earned bite of my sausage roll a huge blast of icy wind carrying what can only be described as a 'ton' of snow into my face, much to Charlie's amusement, but to the worsening of my mood. I suddenly didn't want to be there any longer and stowed my remaining sausage roll, put on my back and moved off. It looked like we'd have a long slog to the summit and then another long slog along a wind-blasted summit ridge until we reached the ski slopes and the warm knowledge that we'd be in the car and home soon.

The best place to end up after a day on the mountain

Then I was over a ridge and I saw the ski resort ahead of me and I'm not too embarrassed to say, let out a bellowing 'Fuck yeah' as I realised I was home free. It's very rare I have a bad day on the hill, and looking back at it now it was pretty fantastic in totality, but at that moment I was having a terrible day and the sight of those ski lifts and the dark rectangle of the main hut below me in the distance filled me with happiness.

Within half an hour we were sat on the gondola and headed down to the car park, chatting with a guy who'd been staying in the CIC hut on the approach to Ben Nevis' North Face. He confirmed to us that the conditions on north-facing slopes are appalling. And then he convinced me and Charlie we needed to go skiing whilst we were here. Charlie has skied since he was 8. I have never even put on skis. That should be fun...

All in all, a pretty good day, even if I did lose my cool a little. It's one of those type-2 fun days. Fun to describe in the pub afterwards to make you sound nails but pretty awful when you're there.

Oh, and to show you how bad the conditions were...this is when the conditions were what I would describe as 'good'.

Scotland '15: It's Dinner Time

Dinnertime Buttress, the dip between the two 'lumps' on the left. Our
walk in took us around the right of this photo, throughthe dark patches
 at the snow line, then up the ridge

And we're into it on the first day. The avalanche and weather reports weren't looking hot - over 700m the slopes were positively lethal on North to South Eastern faces. We'd known that before we'd even left London so Charlie had plotted some decent west-facing routes that we could do even if the weather didn't improve.

Which is what led to us standing by the car at 9.30am, staring up at the west face of Aonach Dubh and trying to find our route on Dinnertime Buttress. We weren't the only ones prepping - two other teams were gearing up. We hoped they'd be looking at other routes on the face but we'd be disappointed - as you'll find out later. After taking a few photos of a glorious Scottish winter morning we set off on the walk in.


The walk in itself wasn't nearly as bad as I've experienced before - this time you could see the final route from the path, though there were a lot of false ridges which gave me and my legs-that-haven't-got-used-to-it-yet a lot of sad times as we expected easy, flat going only to see a slight dip and then more climbing. My thighs were screaming a little by the time we got to the bottom of the route. On the walk in however, I did get my first taste of what 55-75mph winds driving what Charlie refers to as 'Snail' (An evil combination of Snow and Hail) into our faces. It's not an experience I'd like to repeat any time soon, if I'm honest.

Charlie gearing up at the bottom of Dinnertime Buttress

We got to the bottom of the route by about 10.20 and geared up just as another trio of climbers (a guide and two students) set off ahead of us roped together. Initially we were going to rope together but as we discovered as we rounded the corner the terrain ahead of us was relatively easy going - essentially the same terrain that we'd just been walking up, just a little steeper. I followed Charlie's trailblazing up the buttress to the bottom of the only actual climb on the route - the rock pitch.


Unfortunately we arrived just as two other teams were ascending the route, and ended up in what
became a queue when another pair came up behind Charlie and myself. We were stuck for a good fifteen to twenty minutes as the other groups cleared the pitch. The main reason was that the other major routes over the rock band were either too exposed to the biting wind that kept blowing snail at us and driving us off our feet, or covered in windslab and unclimbable.

Charlie waiting in the queue at the bottom of the rock pitch

Eventually we got our turn on the route and I set up the belay whilst Charlie set off. Not that we needed the Belay, he didn't even place any gear. Then it was my turn after he'd built a belay at the top. It was a lovely climb - simple, accessible with good mixed sections. Then, as soon as it was started it was over, I was flaking the rope and carrying on to the top of the ridge. The final section of the climb was a short walk across a snow-laden slope to a narrow gully that led to the summit plateau. As we reached it so did another group, and as we climbed up I found myself at the back of a five-man group in a gully that was being blasted by high-speed winds, spindrift, hail and snow. Thankfully I had my goggles on but they were fogged and I was basically blind for much of the final climb, with wind seemingly howling both down and up the gully to test me and my gear. Even when we reached the summit the wind didn't abate, so after a quick break for food and drink we headed back down the descent gully. The mountains are formidable opponents.

Me soloing the last section of the rock band

The only real notable event on the descent was that we found the gully, which the guide book described as a descent route was instead filled with badly bonded windslab and ended in a sheer drop of 15 meters or more, which necessitated us swimming, then eventually climbing over a saddle and back onto the route we'd walked up. We passed a group of climbers on the way down who we'd seen in the car park and had been headed for another route - that hadn't panned out so they'd come back to attempt Dinnertime. We warned them of the conditions at the summit, wished them luck and carried on.


On the way down I paused to look back at the route and saw two climbers on the upper part of the rock pitch. As I looked I remembered a quote from Buzz Aldrin as he landed on the moon. "Beautiful, beautiful. Magnificent desolation." That's what I thought as I looked up at Aonach Dubh, it's wind-scoured, snow-plastered flanks and the tiny men on its West face. Desolate and Beautiful.

Anyway, we're back at the hotel now. It's pot noodle on the menu tonight.

I'm having curry flavour. Can't wait.


Oh, and here's an example of how bad and quick-to-change the weather was.

Same pair of climbers, seen from my belay stance on the rock pitch. There's about three minutes between photos.
Oh, and that ball of spindrift is made of little balls of icy pain.

Scotland '15: The Journey That Almost Never Was

So we've made it. I'm sat writing this blog in our B&B (in fact in the same room as last year!), with the rain hammering at the window. Oh yeah, it's awful up here.

We decided to take an overnight drive up this year to avoid traffic and give us an extra day up in Scotland. The plan was to leave between 8 and 9, take our leisurely time and arrive about 10 in the morning for check in. In the end what we had was a proper journey from hell. Between having to deal with an angry Irish woman in a petrol station on the Edgewere Road to driving down the snowiest road either Charlie or I had ever seen in a zero-visibility blizzard and the Burger King in every service station we pulled into being closed. It was terrible.

The roads the morning after we drove in. This is orders of magnitude better to what
we had on the way in.

We ended up bashing it out in under 11 hours, and being incredibly early. We took a drive over to Fort William for breakfast, but pretty much as soon as we pulled into Morrison's car park we both passed out for an hour, in less than comfortable positions that left us with what feel like permanent cricks in both our necks. But we got McDonald's breakfast afterwards, so there's always a silver lining.

To be fair, 11 hours straight would do this to anyone

Anyway, here we are now. Conditions are terrible so we're just keeping it chill until tomorrow morning, although we did get the terrible news that the pub over the road has closed, so our normal drinking/eating haunt has gone. And that's the worst news.