Scottish Winter Mountaineering - January 15

Course report: Mark Scales
Course: Scottish Winter Mountaineering

Having been very wild for the last few days, the weather forecast was promising for the weekend, well Saturday at least, and it did not disappoint.

We chose to head up into Stob Coire nan Lochan on Saturday for a skills refresher and intro to mountaineering rope work. We walked up to the coire with blue skies above us, and were greeted by reasonable snow cover and cold dry conditions. We spent time looking at moving safely up down and around on steep snow, progressing on to dealing with an unexpected slip. A journey under the North East ridge took us to an area suitable for practicing bucket seats, buried axes, snow bollards, and all the associated knots.

The updated forecast for Sunday was less inspiring, but we made an early start for a day ascending Ledge Route (II) to the summit of Ben Nevis. The walk in to the CIC hut was punctuated by stopping to chat to teams heading down, put off by the warm damp murky conditions on the mountain. Unperturbed, we continued on to the base of No. 5 Gully, where we looked at suitable spots for gearing up, before making our way to the start of the route. A couple of pitches up, the cloud cleared to reveal an inversion, leaving us on high on the ridge in bright sunshine. The route enable us to look at simple mountaineering movement and ropework, and experience a 3 star route in perfect conditions. The walk across the plateau above the clouds provided a memorable finish to the weekend.

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