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.

Winter in Wales - Glydr Fawr and Crib Goch

There's an old adgage that I've stuck by all through my time in the outdoors, one my father told me. "Any fool can rough it, but it takes a skilled man to make himself comfortable in any situation." This has resonated with me; where others will take only the bare essentials and suffer the consequences, I've been happier to carry a little extra weight for a lot of extra comfort.

However, there are times when even the most prepared man has to rough it. I had to do it, in driving horizontal sleet on Glydr Fawr. In winter. Boy was I roughing it.

The storm that the UK's been suffering for several months showed it's teeth whilst we were there - on our first day we started out on a bleak, damp midwinter's day which quickly developed into the worst conditions I've ever experienced on a mountain. Horizontal, 45 mile an hour driven sleet, rain and hail greeted us in different stages. The wind was just about bearable, but me and Charlie are both 100+kg and it was giving us difficulties, especially on the higher slopes. Whilst it didn't make the ascent any fun per se, it did make it a challenge. Even putting crampons on was sketchy, as everything threatened to get blown over the ridge line at a moment's notice. It was even windy enough to affect the outcome of an HDR shot I took of the mountain.

After we crossed the snowline (which was only around 200m below the summit) the ascent got nice and fun.
With crampons on we tramped up the approach slope, careful to give a wide berth to the cornice sat in the nearby saddle. It wasn't technical, it wasn't difficult but it felt fun to front-point up the last of the slope, haul myself up onto the summit ridge and then tramp the last few hundred meters up to the summit.

The decision on the summit was that we really didn't want to hang around - when you have to bellow to be heard and can barely open your eyes because you've got vicious winds being driven at you, you don't want to hang around on the most exposed bit of mountain. Not to mention we were both soaked to the skin having forgotten to bring waterproof trousers. We thought we'd make a swift descent to the car, dry socks and warmth. Charlie, being more sure on his feet than me in the deep powder snow we were encountering trotted down rapidly, whilst I took the slow, steady 'plunge step' approach.

All in all, though, it only took us 3 hours to go up and down a 1001m mountain - a massive improvement on my pace from Scotland, which is a positive. However we were absolutely drenched - I had pools of water in my boots and I stretched my softshell trousers beyond their elastic limit - they went all baggy! I'll tell you something for free - the drying room at the hostel was very well used that night, and I was very, very thankful we decided to stay in a hostel rather than camp. We'd have had a mare of a time if we'd done that...

Day 2 was to be a winter repeat of a route we'd done the last time we were here - the Crib Goch route up Snowdon. Whilst you might say what's the point, it's something you've already done, it's a totally different undertaking when covered by a thick blanket of snow and blasted by icy winter winds. Especially when that snow is poor condition, thick, deep and exhausting. Much of it was the same, yes - but much of it was different, and it was an interesting approach. It took longer than last time, and we had some whiteout, which was an interesting experience. Everything just dissappears and you lose all perspective of distance, space or even direction - thankfully I had a massive yellow lump to follow who knew the ridge and the line we had to take. At least there was one of us...


The walk off Snowdon, however, was the most difficult bit of the day. The snow was terrible - incredibly deep and seemingly hollow underneath - me and Charlie both repeatedly fell into the snow up to our crotches, but only one leg at a time, so the other would fold comically underneath us as we struggled to use our axe and hands to stand up. I even snagged some pleasant holes in my softshells, including putting my front points through the back of my knee, which wasn't too much fun. It's just another thing to buy, I guess...

All in all though, this trip was more a battle with poor conditions and exhaustion than a technical challenge, orfun per se. But hey, you've got to have the bad days to make the good ones worth it. Hopefully a period of calm some time in the next month or so will allow us to have some fun before this winter season ends. Having said that though, a good portion of me is excited for a summer's climbing. I graduate university in May, and after that all I have to do for summer is find a job and climb.

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)