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.

Adventures in Scotland: Day 5 - Number 3 Gully

Sorry for the late post guys, yesterday was pretty busy what with unpacking from our jaunt and repacking and checking and all the things you do when you leave a hotel.

So we had another crack at Ben Nevis today, after our abortive almost-summit on Monday. We decided to go for a proper north face route, attempting one of the numbered gullies (we eventually settled on No.3 gully). As we'd been hampered by time and my slowness on our last attempt, we decided to start even earlier, and we found ourselves at the start of the walk in for 7.40am. It seems my fitness has improved over the week, because we were up to the fork in the paths almost 20 minutes quicker than monday, which meant we had more time to play with on the face itself.

After making the long, laborious and somewhat scrambly walk along the north face access path we reached the CIC hut at the bottom of Ben Nevis' north face. The CIC hut is pretty much the start point for every route on the face. The Charles Ingis Clark memorial hut has been around since the late 1920s and has served as a home and base to many north face ascent parties over almost 100 years of continuous use. It is entirely self-sustaining and solidly built. You can stay there overnight - as we arrived a group of 5 climbers were leaving to return to home after a week in the hut. I was sort of jealous - at least they got a bit of a lie-in when climbing, no walk in for them...



Having taken a break and assessed what the snowpack felt like, me and Charlie geared up and headed out onto the approach slopes of the gullies. Initially progress was good; overnight rains and freezing temperatures had formed a thick, solid crust of snow that made progress in crampons quick and relatively easy. Every now and then Charlie would check back over his shoulder, double check I was okay and crack on - no hunched over my ice axe this time - I was feeling fit and the progress was good.

As we got higher, however, conditions worsened. The snowpack got thicker, more powdery and significantly less stable - even with crampons and axe I kept slipping and having to clamber out of knee-depth snow on a 45 degree slope. Charlie stopped about 30 meters ahead of me and I could tell he wasn't confident by the way he was prodding at the snow with his axe.

"I don't like it" he called over his shoulder, prompting me to quickly catch up to discuss with him.

"What don't you like?" I replied, settled below him on the slope.

He cast his gaze over towards the immediate approach to Number 3 gully "The snow is getting worse, conditions are getting worse. This is sketchy for me, so it'd be difficult for you. And if the snow is like this in the gully we are going to have no fun, and your lungs are going to fall out"

I immediately nodded; Charlie is the one with four seasons of mountaineering experience. It was his call. "Okay. Let's back off this thing then" I replied. He kept apologising for not being able to complete the route. Honestly, and as I told him, I didn't care - better retreat and stay alive than attempt a route, get stuck in conditions that were beyond my capabilities.

So, unfortunately our last day on the mountain and last attempt at the Ben for this trip was over; just a long walk back to packing up for our return drive home. I can't lie and say I'm not dissappointed we didn't summit, as I was feeling fit, strong and willing to go ahead. But there was literally nothing we could do about it. Maybe if we'd both had more experience we could have battled through, but I didn't want my ambitions to put either of us in danger.

Just means we'll have to return. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Adventures in Scotland: Day 2 - The Ben

Holy mother of god. Scotland is cold. Mountaineering is hard. My body hurts.

Today's target was to summit Ben Nevis via one of the north face routes, doing some proper climbing and not using the tourist track that winds its way up the easier south face. Although it's called the tourist track, it's still quite an undertaking - especially in winter. Our walk-in from the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel took us on the bottom section of the path, and it's long and sloggy and thigh-testing. We got going at around 8.20 in the morning, just as the sky was brightening - a proper alpine start. Despite the early hour and the cold weather I stripped down to my baselayer on the walk in - it was such hard work that I was sweating enough for water to be freezing on the surface of my shirt. Gross, eh?

Our route however would take us up the north face, so instead of going up we followed the smaller path around, slowly dropping into the freezing line and feeling the reason why the north face is regarded as the harder of most north-hemisphere mountains because the weather sucks. It's windy, it's blowy, it's snowy and it's raining - the reason why over thousands of years the north face has been turned into a vertical, rocky wall whereas the south is a very long, very hard hill. This weather would end up scuppering our initial plans - when we got around to seeing it, the north face looked covered in windslab and about ready to avalanche in places - you could almost feel the tension of the snow on the face, just waiting for the magic amount of vibration or snow to fall for it to go. So, we decided on going up the slightly less vertical west face, summiting the smaller mountain at the edge of the Nevis range and then walking across the plateau, heading up to the summit, topping out and heading back down the tourist path. It shouldn't take anything more than a few hours and we could be home and dry before darkness closed in at around 4 in the afternoon.

However, I am fat, unfit and with little practice in the use of crampons in the ascent over long periods - so I was awful. My technique was off, I had absolutely no energy and my legs started cramping up in muscles that weren't used to being used. It was painful, it was sloggy and I was extremely slow - which (understandably) pissed Charlie off no end. I'd take between 3 and 15 steps and then be out of breath or cramping up and have to stop, and as we were roped together, so did Charlie. If it'd been me I'd probably have untied and just left or retreated off, but being the bloke he is Charlie kept going, kept yelling abuse at me and eventually we got up to Carn Dearg (1,221m) after around 3 hours of climbing, which in reality is far too long. We were only around 100m below the summit of Ben Nevis though, so there wasn't much more slogging left to do before we could summit.

At the stop I took on a massive amount of liquid and forced some food into my body despite my total lack of appetite and eventually felt a bit better and we trudged up towards the summit of Ben Nevis. We were extremely lucky with the weather - absolutely clear skies and bright sunshine greeted us on the plateau, something Charlie (who has summited the Ben 4 or 5 times) has only seen once before. It was truly beautiful, especially with the view out over the south face of all of the snow-capped peaks and the clear valleys. It felt very special. However, as we started to walk towards the summit we watched dark clouds descend and obscure the summit ridge and we decided it would be mature, prudent and the right thing to back off from the summit bid and descend.

On our butts.

It's the best way to get down a mountain.

Not an overly brilliant day as I was, to put it mildly, shit, but we eventually got something done and we realised I really, really need to work on my endurance and leg strength. Hard work paid off with some beautiful views and cracking weather, although it kind of smarts that if I'd been fitter and faster we probably could have made the summit before the weather turned, but I couldn't have physically given any more - I was exhausted. It's a day off tomorrow, so I should be able to get a good meal in me tonight, a good rest and use the pain and suffering I went through today to improve my fitness over the next few days. Let's hope so anyway.

Here's some other photos too:

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