Winter Mountaineering - Saturday

Nick

On Friday night I met up with Nick and Rich for their weekend course of Mountaineering, or as it turned out to be - Intro to Winter Climbing. They were both keen to kickstart their winter climbing, so on the Saturday morning we headed into Coire an t-Sneachda. We started with boot, axe and crampon skills, and quickly moved onto anchors and rope management.

Taining manouvres

Rich testing out his bucket seat

Nick

By the end of the day they had picked up different types of belaying, several snow and rock anchor types, they were looking fairly slick with the ropes, so the next day would be to expand the climbing rack and put it all together on a climb.

The coire was busy with many skills groups, and many teams looking to do a climb. Many of the grade I and II lines were climbed - mostly soloed, but anything beyond that grade was bare dry rock. Even several of the I and II lines were patchy or broken, and you could see teams were hesitating before commiting themselves on the line. The snow was thawing, but was perfect for our snow skills - although a little more of it would be great! I had been climbing here last Monday, and walked through last Tuesday, and the thaw has stripped away any sign of ice. I could have used a rack of screws last Tuesday, but this weekend I could have climbed Pygmy Ridge or Fingers Ridge in boots.There was a report (I think from Sandy P) of a chunk of ice falling down on Saturday morning from high up - seen from Aladdin's Couloir. So be careful, rock and still pieces of ice may be falling in the thaw.

Snow lines receding