Ruairidh becomes a climber

So about a year ago Ruairidh came to me with a long term plan to become a climber and a mountaineer. He's been guided up a few things but wanted to do it for himself.
Since then we've been summer and winter mountaineering and single and multi pitch rock climbing and done a few winter routes. He's also filled in skills acquisition charts and been grilled on what he's learnt by me at every opportunity- made to be mindful about every step and drilled in little tips to try and make his performance on the hill a little stronger.
Today he and Alan joined me to go to Buachaille Etive Mor. We soloed up Curved Ridge and he and I swung leads on Agag's Groove both bringing Alan up too. We then scrambled down Curved Ridge with one abseil he helped set up.
Nice one mate- making a better fist of it than many climbers on their first big route!
Nice one to Alan too- not many 69 year olds enjoying that day and setting a pace on the walk out to make me sweat!
Cheers to the two lads who let us jump the queue (one of whom hadn't done the route for almost 40 years!) and nice to see Kenny, James and Ali all out enjoying the impeccable weather too!

 Solo up Curved Ridge

 Ruairidh on the shape end on pitch 2

 alan relaxing with an orange

 Congestion on the middle ledge

 Its raining sunshine on Curved Ridge

 Topping out

 Ruairidh has it all under control

 Down Curved Ridge

 Rannoch Wall still busy

What a day!