Some wee treats in Lochnagar

Dertek and I sauntered up to Lochnagar yesterday enjoying fine calm weather and a hard packed broken trail all the way.

Lochnagar 02/04/2013

 The corrie has certainly held the conditions well with plenty of the white stuff to play on.  Under most we found well frozen turf or a nice layer of ice built up under the neve.  It was only in a few places the crud appeared.

We opted for a couple of shorter routes on the Sunshine buttresses as Derek had never been on any of them.  It also gave us a chance to play around a little with abseils etc.

Following up on the snow arete at the top of Once Upon a Time in the East (V,5)

A civilised lunchtime as apposed to throwing something in your mouth on a dodgy belay ledge!

Derek starting the lead towards the icy groove on Sunset Gully (III).

Tackling the corner with some good moves!

The last shot of Derek before he began his excavation!

Derek led Sunset Gully (III) after an abseil (photo's above).  This gave some nice climbing up a steep groove which was aden with ice and solid neve.  A somewhat deceiving section however as the top thirty meters proved to be pretty horrendous!  The snow was giving way and having climbed well past his last runner Derek embarked on some major snow moving to create what i can only describe as a trough through the top eight metres or so.  The steep wall of fairly cruddy snow was soon emptied down the grove and onto me (fortunately since it was unclimbable it was nice and soft; no harm done).

Yesterday was a great reminder to TEST ANCHORS BEFORE ABSEILING!  Having set up a beautiful snow bollard anchor to abseil down the Red Spout I set up my belay plate and prissuk backuo as normal.  When i went to test the anchor (well away from the edge may i add); my nice skinny ropes acted as a cheesewire through the snow.  Hmmm, scary!  Since we required our axes to climb we couldn't use these for stability so we had to opt for the boring but a lot more safe option of a large boulder spike anchor.  One other thing to add is the usual reminder to tie knots in each end of your abseil ropes to prevent you from disappearing a lot further than intended.

Derek enjoying hotaches for the nth time...

But he was still a happy chappy!

A great day with great banter... Until next time.