With the snowpack still not stable on north through east facing aspects and a good day of weather forecast we decided to head over to the west face of Aonach Mor to climb Golden Oldy. It became clear in the morning that it wasn’t going to be as nice a day as forecast as the wind was pretty strong at the gondola station and it was snowing. The approach to Golden Oldy was really hard work due to deep snow with a murderous crust. By using the gps and a good set of directions we managed to find the start of Golden Oldy without any difficulty where we were met by three parties behind us and it was good to get some confirmation that we were at the base of the route. I soloed the entire ridge while Richard and David moved together alpine style. The conditions on the ridge were fantastic with mostly helpful snow however the weather was awful with lots of wind, spindrift and hill fog. As we approached the snow aretes towards the top of the ridge there was no exposed rock which made protection hard. Read the full article…

After 2 days of walking into crags with winter climbing gear, just to turn back around due to a mixture of bad weather and snow it was great to get out and actually climb something. We left the car at 8 and made quick time up to the coire as we made it up in 1hr20mins. It was a very pleasant walk in with little wind, no rain and even some frozen snow on the old footprints. We cautiously made our way up to the start of Twisting Gully however we turned back just before the gully entrance due to large accumulations of windslab. We then made a new plan, as we knew Mike Pescod climbed Raeburn’s route the day before we headed over to that and were soon at the initial chimney. The first pitch was absolutely fantastic with really interesting climbing, however the climbing was fairly insecure as there was lots of useless snow and almost no gear. It certainly got the adrenalin flowing at times as most of the 6 pieces I placed on a 50m pitch were just for my head… Andrew made quick work of. Read the full article…

I have just got back from another brilliant day out winter mountaineering in Scotland. Having left Torridon on Saturday and spent the last two days sat in Kyle of Lochalsh it was great to be out again. Our target was to climb the Saddle via the Forcan ridge and then climb Sgurr na Sgine before descending via another ridge. The weather in the morning was dry and bright with the tops just below the cloud base, the walk in was a slog but was quickly over and was made better due to the fantastic views we had. Once we got to the snow line our progress slowed due to plenty of soft wet snow, however we finally arrived at the start of the ridge. As we ascended the Forcan Ridge the snow kept improving and there was some great neve at higher altitudes, the ridge was good fun however never challenging. I was surprised to find a fixed rope at the abseil half way along the ridge, I made use of this as a handline and downclimbed which was fun before Andrew abseiled down after me. Unfortunately we we were climbing. Read the full article…

We were lucky enough to get another good weather forecast so headed out for another fantastic day in the hills. Due to having an injured shoulder I abandoned my plans to climb on Beinn Eighe and decided to go mountaineering and join some of my friends on a traverse of Beinn Alligin. In the end we were three groups of four and apart from a holdup after the first horn stayed as separate groups all day. We managed to end up being the last group out which meant a lie in which was very appreciated. On the drive over I was a tad concerned that it might not clear as it was drizzling with a low cloud base, but it started to look more optimistic as we drove down the Torridon valley with moonlight reflecting off the loch. As we were ascending up to the first horn the weather kept improving and we stayed below the cloud base for most of the day. We overtook the middle group on the ascent and just after the third horn we overtook the second group as we were making pretty good time so. Read the full article…