Monday 2 February 2009

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.

2 comments:

Gaz Marshall said...

Hi Alan,

From what I can see it looks like a weasel that you saw. Stoats are bigger and have a longer, black-tipped tail. Your little beastie has a pretty short tail. Pretty cool that he was hanging about 2 pitches from the top of Staghorn Gully.

Gaz

Alan said...

Hey Gaz, that's what we thought too - at this time of year I'd have expected a stoat to be white. He was running round in circles on a 45 degree slope right below th belay to enter the North Pipe
Al