Stac An Fharaidh

Yesterday I was back to work in the Cairngorms, this time with Patrick. We headed up and over the plateau from the Caringorm Ski Centre car park and dropped down into the Loch Avon basin. To say the walk in was warm would be an understatement as the heat was quite hard going.
As we began climbing 'Whispers' (VS 4c**) the clouds came in enough to cool us down a little. Using our imaginary super glue on our hands we relied on a lot of friction to gain height.

Our second route was to be a little harder as we started up 'Pushover' (HVS 5a)**. The second and third pitches were very wet so instead we climbed round the shelf to the right and got onto the second pitch of Rockover which is graded at 5b but since we had rucksacks on we avoided the big move on no holds over the lip.

We continued up this until again meeting streams of water running from the top of the crag. The top section of Pippet Slab (Severe***) was our next option to get us up and off the top of the crag.

The crag itself gives some nice interesting climbing on what is for the most part clean and solid rock. The only drawback is the rather long run outs between gear. We were lucky to find most of the crag dry as the West Flank section was running with water covering most of the upper sections.

The drizzle barely held off as we headed back to the car but managed to consume the higher summits and lay a blanket of cloud just above us before we dropped down into Coire Cas.