Rich's first winter lead

Today I went to Glencoe with Tracey and Rich to get him out on the sharp end in winter. We were treated to a perfect sunny day, light winds and the approach to our route was pretty well scoured. We climbed Dorsal Arete along with another team and Alex whom was out for a solo about. There were a couple of teams from Plas y Brenin traversing Stob Coire nan Lochan in the sun. We also saw parties in Boomerang Gully and Twisting Gully (the crux low down was 'interesting' which I interpreted as rocky). SC looked to be powder snow on rock, but I've never seen Dorsal Arete so banked up as today before. In many places you could traverse easily off into Broad Gully. The slopes beneath the crags had some loose snow on a firmer base but we saw little windslab other than on the very crest of Dorsal. Alex also climbed NC which sounded quite well banked out.

I think Tracey found that the weather just about made up for the walkin/out - but only just! Well done to Rich for leading the route.

Guy from The Ice Factor backed off Thomsons Route on Ben Nevis today describing the snow as 'cruddy'.

White Nile Sunday, Left Twin today

Pics from Karl of White Nile in sunday (bottom 2 pics) - ice protection of psychological value only and a snowy Left Twin today (top 2 pics).

Winter skills Aonach Mor

Today I took Chuck and Guy from The Ice Factor out to Aonach Mor to look at strategies for teaching winter skills. There was a slowly building layer of unconsolidated powder on top of a firm older snowpack. We looked at stepping, slipping and sliding - the last generating some great 'bow waves' of powder snow in the Nid area.

Creag Meagaidh

Today I went to Creag Meagaidh with Gwilym and Jamie. We climbed Staghorn Gully at 400m a lengthy route but most of it is straightforward with only a couple of pitches of III. The lower part of the crags have lost some snow but Raeburns and Easy Gullys are both very full. There is lots of evidence of cornice and wet snow avalanches on a variety of aspects all around the coire from the thaw at the end of last week. Today we had sunshine and snow showers- the latter didn't amount to much and we only saw any real fresh accumulation right up in the window. There is quite a bit of climbable ice around which we found to be solid. The snow was more variable and we were surprised to find running water under deep snow at the back of the Gully only 2 pitches from the plateau. At the same point we were shocked to see a brown weasel like creature with a white throat. This hardy wee beastie ran back and forth on the grade I ground a few metres beneath us before retreating to a burrow in the rocks.

CWA, AMI, AGM

At the end of last week I was running a CWA Training for Lochaber College pictures above. On Saturday and Sunday I was attending coaching workshops at the AMI AGM at Glenmore Lodge.

Nice morning out

This week I've been trying to catch up on paperwork, proofreading a book for on Climbing Walls and running a Climbing Wall Award Training in the evenings. Yesterday looked nice enough that it would have been a shame to stay indoors all day so I went to Aonach Mor to take advantage of the 0800 Gondola. I walked round to the west face with 2 parties from Adventure Peaks and headed up to the bottom of Golden Oldy on some nice wee ice bulges. There is a good trail broken around here at the moment. At the last minute I headed right onto Western Rib (II/III) which gave a few hundred metres of nice knife adge rock and snow aretes to the summit of the mountain. I wandered over the the top of the East face and met Blair from SAIS performing his checks and we both agreed that much of the slab was stabilising slowly but surely. There are however some large cornices about that will descend at some point in the future! Spike and his party had abseiled into Right Twin and Kenny found Stirling Bridge hard going as the cracks were thouroughly iced up. I headed back down before lunch to do some prep before the mayhem of February and March- I've been booked solid for a while now folks but can still recommend some other good people to try for those looking for instruction.

Mamores on Sunday

Yesterday Chuck, Lorenzo and I were working with an adventurous stag group on the Mamores. Despite blizzard conditions the mixed ability team were keen to get up on the tops. We walked from Mamore Lodge up to Stob Coire a Chairn where half of the team decided to retreat to The Ice Factor for a brew. The rest battled their way with us up onto Am Bodach. The Mamore Ridge is sporting some amazing windforms of snow, cornices, aretes and double cornices. As you can see from the pictures we were all looking a bit windswept by the end of the day!