The Irishmen

Eddie and Mark have come over from Galway, looking to get out in the hills and winterise their knowledge. No problem, there's plenty of winter here at the moment.
After a quick dash to the shops it was off to Aonach Mor for a quick day 1 of movement skills and and some serious focus on safe travel in the mountains.
Luckily the guys are fabulous, and natural cramponeers and so we got a lot done.

There's lots of hard snow around the scoured areas of the Nid regions. Cross loading has produced pockets of soft slab on the surface, becoming more pronounced into the northerly and then easterly aspects. The slab is quite discontinuous and there are lots of rocky, grassy islands of safety to move between.
For interest we dug a pit to have a look at the snow profile and found a weak granular layer about 20cm down. The resulting block we isolated broke clean with a big hard jump from above.
This layer is well frozen at the moment, but if it gets warmer is going to get quite unstable.

Crispy on Aonach Mor

A few days ago this was a soggy porridge-fest around here. Not today though. Everything's frozen up nicely making the going generally quite firm under foot.
I was out around about the Nid area of Aonach Mor, accompanying Cio, who was working for West Coast Mountain Guides and kind enough to let me tag along. She and her clients Danny, John and Olly were looking at basic winter mountaineering skills and the conditions today were great for going through the boot-axe-crampons progression. Also covered were simple but effective snow anchors, which the guys tried and failed to test to destruction. Fun.
Arrived back at the car just in time to receive a rescue call-out for Glencoe, however by the time I got there the Navy had flown in and done the business with no real nastiness in evidence. Result.
Good luck with the mountaineering and the Phds chaps!

Nav practice

Slightly bleaker forecast today so Guy and I took the Gondola onto Aonach Mor for some navigation training below the east face.
I've always thought that presented with less than inspiring weather a bit of nav can turn a grim walk into something much more entertaining.
The snowpack was soaked through and with a fall in temperatures forecast should freeze up a bit and stabilise.

Axe Hunt Mission

Found my axe! Which I'm very happy about as in the past I've bought a car for less than a climbing axe costs now.
Kat and I cramponed up a still very firm Red Burn today retracing my steps from last night. Some snow had blown in during the night filling in tracks but we found the axe anyway at about 1100 metres.
We then realised that despite climbing on the Ben before she'd never been on the summit in winter, so as it was a beautiful day we decided to rectify that.
On the way down we encountered a very relaxed looking group of red deer hinds between the half way lochan and windy corner right next to the path, somewhere that I've never seen them congregate before.

Observatory Ridge

Out today with Guy and Henry for a "go and see" trip on The Ben. With the promise of good conditions all round we equipped ourselves with the Rack of the Gods and open minds and made fast progress into the Gardyloo area. After toying with the idea of Point Five we decided against, as it appeared to be holding quite a lot of snow and therefore would be a bit of a slog, we opted for Observatory Ridge.
A great route all round at IV,4, we each had at least one pitch each with real technical interest and just as the climbing gets easier the views get even more splendid!
Only a handful of people around surprisingly, with parties on Tower Ridge, Castle Ridge and Ledge route. The face routes appear quite thin yet, some more melt - freeze required, thin pockets of loosely bonded slab in evidence in sheltered areas.
A good day had by all.
There were however 2 glitches:
1) Whilst bum sliding the Red Burn I foolishly lost one of my axes.
2) It was Sunday and all the chip shops were closed. I fancied a battered sausage smothered in vinegar.

Menage a Trois

Off to Beinn an Dothaidh with Guy with Menage a Trois V,6 in mind. This venue was popular today with 5 cars already parked up. Good weather and nice firm snow all round made the walk in a pleasure. The route appealed and glistened with thick verglas and iced up cracks so protection took a bit of work but the turf was solid.
The climbing was superbly technical and we didn't want it to end!
Other teams were on West Gully and Taxus, which given the 13 cars in the car park when we returned could have got a mention on Sally Traffic.

Stob coire Nam Beith

Kat and I decided to go up into SCN Beith today and find some ice to play on for a short outing.
It felt much warmer and the west face of Aonach Dubh showed signs of depletion. The Screen is still complete, Elliots' Downfall hanging in there, but Number 6 has big holes in it! I'm sure it'll be back soon.
Inside the coire we had a look at the cascades on the Green Slab area which gave us a couple of good pitches of grade III / IV if you follow the steeper bits. The ice was great, nice and chewey and we abseiled from ice screw threads at the top, our 50m ropes getting us just down to the bottom.

AMI mountaineering workshop

This weekend was organised by Alan Kimber for people on the Instructor or Guides schemes to look at using Ben Nevis and Aonach Mor as venues for working with clients.
Alan and James Thacker talked about getting the best out of the area in unfavourable weather and/or snow conditions and we practiced some moving together and short pitching by linking pieces of interesting grade I/II ground east of the Douglas Gap Gully.
On the Sunday we headed to Aonach Mor and looked at good terrain for skills progression and tactics for achieving this. Blair Fyffe (Dr Snow) in his capacity as SAIS observer gave an interesting talk on snow packs followed by more short roping and a look at safe means of access into the climbing areas. This was really useful as Aonach Mor is sometimes a serious place to get around. I think maybe some people see it as quite a benign venue but there are frequently snow slope, cornice and navigational issues to deal with.

Blue Riband

A long standing ambition of mine has been to climb Blue Riband V,5 on the south flank of the Aonach Eagach ridge, which up until the last couple of years didn't come into condition very often.
Guy and I went up today and with a great forecast found the lower pitches to be in great nick. The central section was a bit of a slog and we found ourselves front pointing semi-frozen moss, sweating in the sunshine. The top pitch was a bit scanty but went at tech 6 we thought.
At the top we decided to go east along the ridge with blue sky views all around and got back to the car just as it was getting dark.
One of the most memorable climbing days I've had for a long time.

Pictures courtesy of Guy S.

Ice on the Ben

Accompanied Alan Halewood with his client into the North Face of Ben Nevis today and in the teeth of increasing wind and burning spindrift did some great climbing.
First up was 2 pitches of grade IV ground on the CIC cascades followed by the first pitch of Waterfall Gully and an abseil off.
Thanks Al.

Pictures courtesy of Al H.