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.

Adventures in Scotland: Day 3 - Curved Ridge (again)

Another day, another mountain. The previously planned day off after our attempt on Ben Nevis went by the wayside thanks to a friendly little weather forecast; having popped into the pub for a meal and talking to the barmaid, we checked out an accurate forecast which told us Wednesday would be awful, but Tuesday would be clear and dry. So the decision was made for us.

As we'd been held up by my slowness on Sunday, we decided to have another crack at Curved Ridge on Buachaille Etive Mor and actually summit this time. We set out far earlier, catching breakfast at our B&B and getting onto the walk-in for 9am just as the sun came up, in near-whiteout conditions with low lying fog blocking out the mountains, but undaunted we set off.








Eventually we reached the start of the route, after some fun but sometimes sketchy crampon-less front pointing and losing sight of Charlie (and the ascent route) several times. At about the same height (but further across) as we finished on Sunday, we started actually climbing the route, with Charlie leading the first pitch up and over the ridge. After he got safe I followed. The route was really good fun; not overly technical but challenging for someone new to mixed climbing. There was very little ice or decent snow, so most of the time my ice axe picks and crampon points were teetering on very thin rock seams or torqued into little cracks. I did have one fall, though - a bit of a swinger as I finished removing gear from the wall. My precariously positioned crampon points slipped off their hold and my only placed axe blew under the pressure. It was a bit of a tumble, and I ended up horizontal, facing the wrong way but it wasn't all bad; the line it put me on was a far easier climb, and after burying my axes in some frozen turf I hauled myself up to Charlie's belay position.

We quickly changed over gear and I belayed him on the next pitch. However, as he went up, he realised that the rest of the ridge was poor quality snow and difficult climbing - even the gully that followed next to the ridgeline was full of slushy, partially melted snow and as such was a no-go. After a bit of a discussion we decided it was best if we just cut our losses and descended. Charlie directed that instead of down-climbing the pitch we'd just ascended, we'd traverse around to the snow field we'd played on during Sunday's practice.

Despite being disappointed that we didn't complete the route, we were pleased with our maturity in making the decision to descend (the right one apparently - as we drove away an hour later the entire north face was blanketed in thick cloud) at the right time and the competence we'd both shown in both ascent, traverse and descent was a solid achievement.

Now Wednesday will definitely be a day off. We're going to go into Fort William and spend money on things we don't need. That's the best fun you can have on holiday, isn't it?





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

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)

Adventures in Scotland: Day 1 - Buachaille Etive Mor

It's been coming for some time, it's been planned, everything had been bought and now finally, after all that, it is winter and I am in the Highlands.

Today is a good day.

We arrived last night at about 6 having driven past the snowy highlands in absolutely beautifully bright moonlight and clear skies, and got set up in our (frankly for the price, palatial) B&B and got a good night's sleep. This morning, it was up at 7.45, a full cooked breakfast and then to the mountains (with a quick detour to Kinlochlaven to get me some crampons).

As today was my first day out on snowy hills, we decided to take it easy and do a simple route on a mountain we'd seen on the way in the night before. It wouldn't be too taxing - conditions aren't perfect but they are far from truly awful - but it would give me a chance to get some solid practice in on a proper ascent and a summit on my first day. We didn't get onto the mountain proper until around 11am, which we would later work out was far too late.

As it turned out it wasn't quite like that, with my inexperience, complete lack of technique and initial lack of fitness and confidence slowing us down quite significantly. One section on the walk-in was rather sketchy and after vainly scrambling on verglassed rock and frozen turf, experiencing a couple of slips and being absolutely 100% convinced I was about to die I grabbed out my ice axes and hauled myself up. Trapsing up to where Charlie was waiting I was met with a little bit of abuse, which to be honest I probably deserved, but it was time to do some proper winter stuff. Now it was onto the first snow field on out chosen route (Curved Ridge, for those wondering), a wide vertical band of snow maybe 150 meters from bottom to top, where we donned crampons and had some practice at self-arrests, ascending, descending and traversing with crampons and ice axe technique.




After all that and having climbed the height of the snow field, we decided that the delay we'd experienced would prevent us from summiting and descending safely before last light. As such, we said we'd do a single pitch route then descend and head home. The route itself wasn't taxing, but climbing with axes and crampons is a new experience, and it was initally a bit uncomfortable using tools on bare rock, but we eventually made it to the top for pasties and a glug or two of hot ribena. Then it was an abseil back down the route which unfortunately a little bit short, necessitating some incredibly sketchy down climbing. After that it was a front-pointing escent of the snow field, crampons off, down the footpath and home for hot ribena and dark chocolate hobnobs.

Looks like we're headed for the Ben tomorrow.

Keen.

Glorious.

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