Intro To Mountaineering

Jagged Globe

This will be a long weekend (3 day course) working for Jagged Globe. I'm the Course Director, so I get to drive the Van.

Last night I met Rick, Kevin and Rob at the hotel and found out what they wanted from the course.

Today to learn all the basics we headed up to Aonach Mor and the Nid Area. They especially loved the sliding and rolling about learning to Self arrest. Eventually after a little steep snow we moved onto learning some ropework for Mountaineering.

Our journey down had to include the normal 200m slide - a normal awesome day out.

We're all ready now for a big day out on Sunday...

Heavy Rain And Strong Wind

Adventure Peaks

The last day of the course. Today I was with Ian, Barry and Hanne. We wanted to make best use of the day, but the forecast said that there would be an inch of rain falling in a few hours, accompanied by gusting winds of 50-70mph. We decided to take in another summit and practice our navigation up to the top of Aonach Mor.

The weather definitely started to become a little wild ! We were all on our second pair of gloves by the time we got to the summit plateau, and started to combine pacing as well as timings. The photo shows Barry and Hanne getting the Bearing and pacing right with Ian. The next photo shows Barry following the bearing into the mist, carefully avoiding walking off any cornice onto the East or West Face.

We eventually made our way back down to the descent to our start - we even managed to find a snow slide to help us lose 200m of altitude in about 1 minute - an essential part of any day.

An excellent course, and well done to everybody. The Scottish weather was about the worst it's been for all of 2009 - time now to rest and dry those boots out...

Everything is melting fast. The temperature was very high today, even on the summit plateau where the ice was fast melting. There were rivers running through the ice. Let's hope that something survives for the MIC assessments in the next 2 weeks.

We Wanted To Go Up Bidean Nam Bian

Adventure Peaks

Today I was with Ian Oldham, Barry, Hanne and Peter. Day 4 of the Winter skills course. We wanted to go up Bidean really, but we had to consider the weather - which was forecasting strong (50mph) winds, heavy rain for most of the day and wet snow instabilities, with additional wet slab deposited overnight (cat 3). We decided to keep out of gullies and with tired legs we kept off Bidean and planned a Stob Coire nan Lochan circuit taking in the Zig Zags en route..

We all enjoyed the Zig Zags (a spot of wet rock climbing) and moved on to the ridge. The first photo shows Barry enjoying one of the first rocky climbing sections. In the later section of the ridge we moved into crampon action and kept to the hardest line on the rocky ridge. The secoond photo shows Peter enjoying exposure, with Hanne and Ian close behind (Barry had disappeared off ahead somewhere).

We looked at navigation at the top.

Ken you were missed today..

Well done guys today.

We saw lots of teams out. I saw Sam Leary leading Dorsal Arete topping out. Several teams led NC gully. Nobody went into SC gully. All the buttresses looked loose and about to fall apart.

70mph

Ken and Barry were joined by Peter, myself and Ian today. The forecast wasn't good - winds of 50mph possibly gusting to 70mph on high tops and ridges, snow, sleet or rain showers etc - a normal Scottish day.

So with this in mind we planned a lower level winter day up Buachaille Etive Beag, to the col and across the ridge to Stob Dubh. The first photo shows Barry, Peter and Ken with Stob Dubh in the background with the ridge leading up to it.

The wind was initially gusting 50mph, but when we got half way along the ridge it picked up to 70mph and so we had to learn about making mountaineering decisions. We learnt that sometimes you need to turn back to stay safe, rather than risking it all and getting into an epic. Excellent effort from the whole team - well done in difficult conditions.

Hopefully the wind will ease tomorrow...

Stay safe everybody in these difficult conditions, sometimes it's best to turn around, and it'll always be there another day...

There has been some slab building up on the hard icy crust on some aspects - so take care as it builds up.

Ben Action

There has been a lot of action on the Ben recently. Number 2 Gully avalanched twice yesterday. The first of these hit a team. They all eventually ended up in hospital as walking wounded but the last of the 3 should be discharged tomorrow. Thank you to the Mountain rescue teams involved and the helicopter teams - another excellent job. Thank you.

Ken Barry and I headed for the Ben ourselves for a mini adventure. We found that all the teams on the international climbing meet were already there. Many had left Glenmore at about 5am to get to the ice first, and so were off the ice before lunch !

We got onto Number 4 Gully and got to the Summit - first time for Ken and Barry - well done.

Teams were climbing 4, 3, 2, Glovers, Green, South, Central Right hand, Good Friday, Indicator wall, Smiths, Observatory - in fact to be honest, you name it and there were teams queueing up for it !

On the way down the Red Burn we found the now infamous tobogan run - a 300-400 metre tobogan snow slide honestly better than a theme park... The only trick is to get off at the right time before getting swallowed up by the stream down the hole !

More Winter Skills tomorrow !

Winter Skills - Find The Snow

Today I was working for Adventure Peaks starting a 5 day Winter Skills course.

On the course are Ken and Barry. This was Barry's first day with crampons.

We went to Aonach Mor around the Nid area. We did all the normal skills for day 1, use of the boot, uses for the axe, self arresting - sliding, rolling down the slopes. Use of crampons. The photo shows us on a rare commodity - an ice line at an altitude of only 750m - melting fast !

At one point it felt like we had the entire mountain to our selves, then we met groups from PYB, and lots from Jagged Globe, - Okay we'll share the mountain.

We had poor visibility for most of the day, so perfect for practising navigation.

The guys had a great day and are all prepped for using these new skills in the days to come.

Big Day Out

Day 2 of the course. The course was 9 people strong keen for a day out to test their skills, so we planned to do the Stob Coire nan Lochan horseshoe. We carried out a clockwise accent. We found the snow to be a little firmer than yesterday after the cooler NW winds. All day the wind only reached a maximum of a 55mph gust, so better than yesterday. After a bit of initial rain, it turned to snow later. The cloud even rose through the day so later from the summit we managed to see the hotel in Onich.

We enjoyed lots of rocky scrambling on the initial ridge. The second photo shows a section of the scrambling.

At the summit we even had time to chill with a second lunch break - awesome.

On the way down we were checking the climbing conditions and found SC gully to be firm snow at the top but blank rocky sections for the grade 3 sections. NC gully was looking healthy though, good firm snow, well stepped out for most of the way.

Well done guys on a great weekend - back to work for some tomorrow though :(