Winter (apparently) Mountaineering

Today I was working on the 1st day of a 4 day Winter Mountaineering course. We headed up to Aonach Mor and covered basic winter skills - moving on snow and ice with and without crampons, cutting steps, self arresting, avalanche awareness; quick pits, Rutchblocks tests etc and finished off at the cafe after a small journey up to the wee cairn. Tomorrow Paul, Mark and Dave are going to be going out with Karl to cover rope work skills and I'm going to head out with them and shadow and assist. We experienced some rain and very brief snow higher up but nothing substantial and it felt fairly mild.

SCNL via The Zig Zags

Today Susan was up for something a little more hands on and some more snow, so I decided to take her up the Zig Zags on Gearr Aonach and then we continued up onto the East ridge and the down the north ridge of SCNL. It rained for a considerable amount of the day and only briefly fell as snow higher up. Susan learnt the basics to navigation and managed to navigate us both off the summit and back into the corrie floor. Crampons were not really needed, however we did put them on for the last rocky sections of the East ridge, just to give Susan a feel for scrambling over rocks with spikes on her feet. After a quick walk down we went and discussed the weekend over a nice cool shandy in the Clachaig.

Glencoe Ski Centre

Today I was out with Vicky and Susan who are both on a 2 day Winter Skills course. We headed up along the chair lift and found some great patches of snow to teach movement and using the boot as a tool, we looked at uses of the axe and how to self arrest, step cutting and route choice and we also had a good look at avalanche awareness. The weather was quite fierce up there with high winds and transportation of snow quite evident. As we were getting higher the snow pack was firmer and fresh snow was getting deposited on top.

Glencoe

Today I went out with Plas Y Brenin on a day 1 of a WML Training Course. We went up to Buachaille Etive Beag and covered snow skills, group movement, self arrest, looked at snow pack and avalance tests. Looked like there had been a very light dusting of snow on Stob Coire Sgreamhach (1072m). Very wet snow underfoot, as expected with the past week of weather.

Winter skills - Day 2

Yesterday I headed into the Mamores with Ginny, Alasdair, Gavin and Linda for their final day of their Introduction to winter skills course. the plan was to practice the skills they had learnt from yesterday and put them into a more realistic content. We summited Am Bodach, most of the groups first Munroe, however unfortunately we never go a view from the top. Again it was quite mild, chilly in the wind but with a obvious thaw underway. How it does get colder later this week.

Winter skills - Day 1

Today I have been running day 1 of a 2 day Introduction to Winter Skills course for The Ice Factor. We headed up into Coire nan Lochan, Glencoe looking at safe movement through the mountains and use of the equipment carried. The temperature was no where near freezing, and the snow and ice appeared to be thawing and the buttresses were very black. I saw multiple teams on Doral Arete, which would be a suitable choice in these thawing conditions. Tomorrow we are going to head up into the Mamores for a journey and hopefully help the group get their first winter Munroe.

Green Gully

A damp day today on Ben Nevis but with good ice on many routes. We headed up and climbed Green Gully which sported good ice throughout. The temperature rose as the day went on, turning the buttresses black and softening up the ice. After an early start we finished our route nice and early and decended number 4 gully. Graham lost his Rab gloves on decent. Please could you let me know if you find them. Cheers.

Windy up on Ben Nevis

Today's original plan was to climb Point 5, but with the wind blowing all this fresh snow around, we knew that it would be like trying to climb up a waterfall (of spindrift). Jamie and I headed up to the CIC hut, passing a couple of parties who said it was too windy, and got a better look from there. We headed up to Thompsons Route. From this height we could see that lots of the mixed lines were very white and looking very tempting and the gully's were looking good, despite being quite loaded with snow. Very high winds meant constant flow of snow up my nose, down my jacket and making my eyelashes freeze together. I set of on Thompsons to find very soft snow/ice and nothing to get a good purchase on, I remember the first section being straight forward under previous conditions. After a while of scraping and almost drowning in spindrift, I down climbed and we escaped up Number 3 Gully and walked up to the summit and hid in the Shelter. The wind was blowing so much snow around both on the tops and on the cliffs. One team backed off Gargoyle Wall, think the went and climbed Number 3 Gully Buttress, one team on SW Ridge of Douglas Boulder (good option when there are high winds), also Alan Kimber was on Ledge Route. Anyone pick up some BD trekking poles from the CIC hut, by the gas bottles? If so please get in touch with me or Ken Applegate from OB. Cheers

Staff Training on Wednesday

As I have just compleated my Winter Mountain Leader Training last week, Alan wanted to go out on the hill and talk through stratergies of looking after groups in the winter mountains. We went over lots of points I covered in the training and picked up new ideas and shared mine accross too. We went up to Aonach Mor, where we were met by pleanty of snow, all of which falling very calmly, unaffected by the wind. As the day went on winds did pick up ever so slightly but never affected our day.

Aonach Mor and Creag Meagaidh

On Tuesday we took the gondola up to Aonach mor to look at snow anchors, ropework and then put them into scenarios that we may come across. Lots of snow being blown around the summit area and the top of the Nid area, several skiers and boarders making use of the snow on the piste.

The last two days we were on our overnight expedition to the Creag Meagaidh Nature Reserve. We set of from Moy Forest and headed up to the pleatau. Whilst walking up Alt Coire Choille-rais we decided to alter our route to avoid any wind slab and potential avalanche areas. There was lots of wind slab around and winds were gusting quite high as we got higher. Creag Meagaidh is a great venue for practising navigation, we were in the cloud line most of the time which gave us a great opportunity to test eachother. After a moderate walk-in, we found a ideal place for a snow hole and started digging. 3 hours later we had a huge snow hole and ate lots of food. We then went out for a 2 hour night navigation exercise and then headed to bed. In the morning we headed down to the base of Coire Ardair for a scope of the routes and headed back to the van. Lots of snow being blown around, gully's all loaded with fresh snow, some of the ice routes are forming but thin looking in areas.

Winter Mountain Leader Training

Today was a journey day up into Stob Coire Nan Lochan in Glencoe. We approached via the footpath leading from the car park, walked up to the corrie then took on the East ridge to the summit. From the summit we headed down the North ridge back to the corrie floor and back out via the footpath. The weak occlusion moving over Scotland brought quite cloudy conditions and relatively calm wind, until we reached the summit, where we got a break in the cloud and the wind picked up. It was clear that there has been alot of snow blown around in several directions over the last few days, really loading some sheltered slopes with wind slab. The crags are looking plastered, it just getting up to the routes which may be hard work. Not many teams on the hill here, passed one team who had climbed up Dinner Time Buttress and another team were practicing self arrests in Broad Gully?!?!?! Then they made a start on Dorsal Arete as we descended from the corrie.

Winter Skills Part 2 and Snow!!!

Today Shona, Grant and John were on their second day of a 2 day winter skills course. Yesterday they were out with Big Al , he took them in to Stob Coire nan Lochain and looked at movement on the snow using the boot and axe with and without crampons, emergency snow shelters, snow profiles and a walking Rutch block test.

Today, after checking weather and avalanche forecasts, we headed up into the Mamore's to put the skills they learnt into practice. As the weather was very wild we planned to keep moving as much as possible, with only short stops to look at navigation and the snow pack to help the guys understand more about what is going on under foot. We walked from Mamore Lodge up to the col between Na Gruagaichean and Stob Coire a' Chairn then walked the ridge north west to the summit. We descended to the col just below Am Bodach and decided to head back down as the wind and snow was very powerful and the group were getting tired with wading through the snow. We descended back into the Corie and walked back to the Ice Factor for a hot chocolate.

Lots of snow was falling on the hills, large amounts of wind slab accumulating in the sheltered spots and it was very cold in the high winds providing some hard packed snow in exposed areas.

Winter Walking around Glen Lyon

Yesterday Lorenzo, Jamie and I headed into the mountains in search of snow and fine weather. Yesterday was foul, driving rain and sleet, high winds and cold temperatures. We headed out from Kinloch Rannoch, and due to a last minute change of plan (we were told stalking was going on where we were heading) we headed to a wee bothie at GR673,555 (sheet 51). On arrival we realised we couldn't spend the night here (it was wet, windy and cold inside), we headed down to the Glenmore Bothy. At this point the rain was heavy, water levels were high and one member of our group mis-calculated their jump and landed in a fast flowing burn!! Not a great start. We arrived at the bothy and ate and slept. In the middle of the night Lorenzo became very sick, so in the morning Jamie and I decided to do the walk and Lorenzo was happy to walk out to the car. Jamie and I headed from the bothie up to Meall na Aighean, then up to Carn Mairg, across to Meall Garbh and finally to Carn Gorm. We descended via Glen Sassunn and got back to the car before dark. 4 Munroe's in the two days. Today's weather was very cold, we experienced lots of hard packed snow ice on the tops as well as some layers of wind slab around. As there were quite high winds over night, there was quite a bit of riming present too.