THE Scottish Winter Climbing Meet

Rich Bentley has taken the bit between his teeth to get a major social event off the ground for anyone interested in scottish Winter climbing. Should be a great chance to meet new climbing friends, catch up on old ones share a few beers and some quality chat and routes.

This coming winter Fort William is proud to host the inaugural Scottish Winter Climbing Meet. This weekend meet is being organised by local guides and instructors with the support of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland which is helping to promote the event. It is a celebration weekend of Scottish Winter climbing and gives climbers a chance to meet, chat and climb together on an informal basis. It is hoped that this will become an annual event being held at different locations each year throughout Scotland. Some of the leading lights of Scottish Winter Climbing will be around for the weekend and there will be a social evening on the saturday which will include a talk by one of Scotland's top winter climbers. The weekend is open to all whether you climb grade 'wee' or grade 'ridiculous'.

Watch the website for details: http://www.scottishwinterclimbing.co.uk. Make sure you are in Fort William for the weekend and see you there!

Home time from Spain

Quick hit over successful crushage today all round! Back home to the snow and my tools :-)
Thanks to Dino, Sal, Chris and John for top trip!

Another day and more rock

 Breaking the law

 Slabs

 Dino high stepping

 Chris on the sharp end

 John takes it easy

 Sport/Trad

 Focus Sal

 Hands of a climber

The long way down

Winter break in El Chorro- followed by the cold

 Valentines Day comes early (4 pitch 6a)

 Vultures circling

 Sal hanging out

 On the way down

Dino on Small People (6b?)

It was baltic at El Chorro today. We climbed the 4 pitch 6a St.Valentines day and the teams following us bailed because of the wind. After that we stuck it out for Short People and Tall People (both VERY soft 6bs) before fleeing the cold. John and I headed out and I held his rope on a red point attempt on a very sequency 7a+ whilst Chris got to work on dinner!

Grafting on Golden Oldy

Out for day 2 with Frank and we went for a leg stretch. The Gondola is not open to the general public at the moment (its the annual maintenance period although the BAIML Conference looked to have caught it up to look at some snow shoeing from the tracks we saw higher up) so it was a walk from the woods for us. The showers we had felt at the end of yesterday on Ben Nevis had continued all night to deposit lots of deep snow on the West face of Aonach Mor for us to wade through to get to Golden Oldy. The mountaineering was grand once dug out from its deep blanket and the views were great until we topped out. This gave me a chance to demonstrate a couple of legs of poor vis. nav to get a justifiably weary Frank back down. A hard day but we kept it within daylight hours!

 Flogging in

 On route

 Long way up, long way to go

 Weary but happy

 Still going

 Not there yet but great views

Last bit to the top and no views at all

Frank's first foray into winter mountaineering- Ledge Route today

Out today with Frank who is new to winter mountaineering. A stunning morning and we went to Ledge Route. It had been a cold night and there were plenty of fresh low ice smears on the rock and the path. We had a grand day picking a good line up the route. The snow is still fresh and mostly unconsolidated but there were some climbers out making good choices on the rocky routes on either side of No.3 Gully. Plenty of rime above 900m today but buried turf was spongey at 1000m under the deep snow. The weather deteriorated as we were on the hill and it felt quite mild on the plateau as we headed to the top of No.4 Gully to descend (plenty snow in the Gully but the Coire is still rubbly) and below the hut the sleet was falling as drizzly rain. We could do with a mini thaw to settle the snow and build us a base. More of the same tomorrow!

 Frank liking the scenery (spot the climbers?)

 In the bottom of No.5 Gully

 On with the rope

 Happy mountaineer

 Near the top

Heading down No.4 Gully

Plenty of chat on UKC about people making questionable decisions about whether routes are in condition or not. Much of the higher turf is still insulated and soft so leave it alone by climbing really easy/really steep and rocky until more consolidated winter conditions prevail. You can of course get lucky with a little understanding like James did today finding turf a little lower and less buried to be frozen. Guy did Sidewinder today and Lost the Place got another ascent after yesterday's. We could also see the climbers on Darth Vader and on the other side of No. 3 Gully.

Last Scottish rock climb of the year for me

 Bonny Ben Nevis morning

 Hoar frost on the Soldier's Bridge over the Lochy 

 This way up?

Snow on the Mamores

Out with UHI students again today in a frosty Glen Nevis. We looked at personal and group abseils building systems off of a variety of anchors and even had a wee go on Tear. Brrrr. Back on the hills tomorrow.