Scottish Winter - some Ben Nevis days
February started with a couple of foul days, the sort of days I wanted to sit on my hands and give the drying room some respite. Fortunately the foul weather gave way to some reasonable icey conditions on Ben Nevis.
I have had many days arranged with Alan this season but for one reason or another we haven’t been able to climb in good conditions. Fortunately we managed to get a good route in on Ben Nevis. Our first plan was Comb Gully (IV,4), the Cold Climb classic but we were pipped at the post by one climber and his mate. Fortunately there is plenty of good climbing in the vicinity so we went and climbed Comb Gully Buttress which is a really good value grade IV,4 (some say IV,5). It’s a great route as it has more interesting climbing than Comb Gully depending on the build up, but certainly for us, we had 4 good pitches of climbing and an easy snow ramp pitch.
The next two days I was out with Andy. We have an upcoming alpine trip in the summer so we were keen to get some good routes done while in Scotland. First up was the East face of Aonach Mor, which wasn’t the best conditions to be honest. We climbed (most of) White Shark (IV,4), abseiled off then climbed Right Twin (II) which was in very bad conditions. We both certainly had wide eyes after today.
Fortunately our day on Ben Nevis gave much nicer ice and far nicer weather. I suggested an early start so we could get to a route first but also climb some other routes as well. We started off with Green Gully (IV,4) which was in sub-optimal conditions. The ice was nice to climb but protection was mostly a joke, with the odd good nut here and there. We topped out very quickly, descended number 3 gully and made our way over to Central Gully (III,4) on Creag Coire na Ciste. We found much nicer ice here where I was able to place all my screws! As it was so good, we then climbed Central Gully Right Hand (IV,4). An abseil can be set up to get back down to the start ad then retrieved when you climb back up to the top. A nice finish into blue skies and a nice walk down Number 4 gully to see where others were climbing. Teams were all over the mountain, we were very glad to get an early start.
