Three Cliffs Bay

Today the rain stopped early enough to allow the rock to dry out, so combined with a low tide I found myself climbing on Three Cliffs. I had the whole bay to myself except for 3 riders on ponies.

With the tide slowly advancing and the sun going down I climbed Initiation Flake, Perseverance, Spouse Crack and Left Corner II. The other climbs will be there for another day.



Above you can see Great Tor in the distance from the top of 3 Cliffs.

Back In The Saddle

At last I'm back in the saddle.

In the background of the photo you can see Three Cliffs in Three Cliff Bay, with Pobbles Bay and Shirecombe beyond. Three Cliffs and Great Tor are 2 of the jewels in the Gower Crown. You can also see the clouds brewing - shortly after the photo was taken it started to rain.

After a long lay off of 8 weeks, I'm starting to get fit again. Today I cycled to Great Tor on Gower to climb one of my favourites - the 'East Ridge' (S, 4 pitches, 73m ***) - this is fantastic and a must for everybody.

I managed to climb one of my favourites and cycle 32km - so a good day. I'm well on the road to a full recovery..

Time to put axes away?

The days are long now and the daffodils are out, it's Spring in Fort William, but you can just about find winter in the high hills if you look. There are still high ice routes in nic on the Ben.

There were people skiing on Aonach Mor today - there's still a few runs open for the mega keen. The chair and lots of buttons were open for business. However the snow continues to melt with freezing levels above the summits at least for another 2 days.Hannah had to work hard today cutting about 200 steps on the steeper snow, putting her training into practice. Good effort.
For those wanting to climb on the higher Ben routes the temp looks to be dropping in the near future (less than a week from now). However for those that have already given up, dry summer crags beckon... Axes away and time to squeak those rock boots again...

Sunday 29th March

Stob Coire Nan Lochan on Sunday was moderately busy. Definitely not the busiest weekend of the winter. Jagged Globe had a group in the Coire, Led by Andy Chapman up Dorsal Arete. Category 4 was the forecast for the snow avalanche hazard. Lots of people were turning back from spooky slab. A group was cautiously pushing up Boomerang Gully, and a few people managed a successful accent of Broad Gully. There was lots of slab requiring caution on many aspects. There is a report that one person was avalanched 300m down No.4 Gully on the Ben, even after abseiling in and testing the slope. In conditions like this maximum respect for the slab is needed

Winter is still here and will healthily move into April. There are still lots of routes in condition high up.

SC Gully had loose slab in it's upper and lower sections. In this photo can be seen a team of 3 walking out, wisely backing off from their climb, in these conditions.

SC Gully - On My Mind

Thank you to Kevin for these photos. Photo 1 - Me in the stretcher.

The second photo shows the scene 10 mins after I left on Sunday 1st March. ...

It all looks a bit rocky.

1st March - Part 2 - SC Gully, Up Close And Personal

The photo shows SC Gully (III ***) just left of the centre of the photo. Below the gully the photo shows the boulder strewn aproach slopes -

(where I stopped between the boulders).

As a result of my quick trip through SC Gully, I have a lot of people to thank :

GMRT - Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team
RAF - Mountain Rescue
Jagged Globe
Belford Hospital - all the staff
All the Climbers / Walkers / Mountaineers / Instructors and Doctors who were on the scene...

Thank you to Adrian Pedley for getting to me first and initially looking after me. Thank you to Maria for helping me and frantically trying to get a mobile signal to call the GMRT..

.... Thank you to everybody involved in my BIG DAY OUT.

I plan to go back and do SC in the Traditional manner..

1st March - A Big Day Out. Part 1

Jagged Globe

We started off on the Zig Zags, and learnt how to safely move together using a rope. Rob, Kevin and Rick learnt about direct belays and different ways of using a rope. At this point we hadn't reached the snow line. We moved up onto the Stob Coire Nan Lochan ridge and got stuck into the climbing. The first photo shows Kevin making his way up. The second photo shows Rick enjoying a section of the ridge.

We got to the summit in good time and the team showed they could navigate in difficult conditions, and not fall into the common Nav black spot of heading off to Bidean.

On the way down we wanted to check out the Gullies of the same aspect as those on The Ben, to help determine a plan for Monday. We first analysed Broad Gully, and moved onto SC gully. I was just about able to find a 'safe' position where I could see over the edge. I was pleased to see that nobody had climbed the route today - there was at least 5-6 inches of fresh slab on the surface of the old harder snow.