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'.