Improvers Snow and Ice climbing course. 28 Feb - 1 March

Course report: Nigel Hooker
Course: Improvers Snow and Ice climbing

Over Friday night a warm, wet and windy storm travelled over the west coast of Scotland resulting in thawing snow and Ice followed by heavy snowfall and spindrift as the temperature dropped later on Saturday followed by yet another warm, wet storm cycle hit again around early/mid afternoon. With only a 2 day course Mike was happy to make the long drive over to the Cairngorms to escape the wet and High category Avalanche risk and hope that the more favourable weather forecast was true and the next storm cycle hit after sunset as forecasted.

The plan worked and we found plentiful, if a bit soft, ice on Mirror Direct IV 4 and steeper ice than Mike had climbed before. As we walked back across the plateau the wind increased and we had not driven very far westward before meeting heavy rain. Chris  took his mountaineers up past the CIC hut on Ben Nevis to cover movement skills and some rope work with them, commenting that there was a lot of snow blowing around higher up the hill and they walked out through heavy rain.

On Sunday Mike and I headed up Ben Nevis with the plan of seeing what low level routes could be accessed. Several teams were already heading for the SW ridge of the Douglas Boulder so we headed up to the Curtain IV 5 which seemed to have the least spindrift of the available routes. Even so we were still being hammered by heavy spindrift almost all the way up.

In order to avoid the potential avalanche risk in Number 5 Gully we descended by abseil which also meant we were able to avoid the thin, thawed out final section onto Ledge route. Over the weekend Mike got some good ice climbing done in challenging weather and began to understand the phrase ’full on Scottish!’ The mountaineering team made an ascent of the Zig Zags of Gearr Aonach in Glencoe and then braved the wind along the ridge to descend the Stob Coire nan Lochan path somewhere below them in the thigh deep snow. Various planned trips to higher altitude peaks should be a breeze after experiencing a ‘typical’ Scottish winter weekend!