Sun 7 Feb, Climbing

Day 2 of our winter climbing weekend and the rest of The Glasgow Academy team were on various mountaineering and winter walking journeys using the skills they worked on yesterday. Sam, Adam and I went back to Sneachda looking for a short interesting climbing day andf headed towards a busy Mess of Pottage. However, after the team ahead of us backed off of The Haston line this gave us a clear run and a great route. The snow ice is good and firm 90% of the way but the icey steop up left is thin and well hacked up brittle ice. The lads relished the challenge and charged up the upper two pitches. After that we just had to pick our way up to 1141 and down to the cafe.

Many of the cramponed paths on the coire rim are perilously close to the corne lips (i.e. 1m or less in places) as the vis has been so poor you can't see the edge until your on (or over :-( it at the moment. Take care and rope someone up to find the edge or navigate well in from the coire rims in poor vis.

Back at Glenmore Lodge next week teaching winter lead climbing.