Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Winter Skills






Last week was spent running a winter skills course with Ben, Simon and Claire. We had excellent weather on Monday with bright blue skies, sunshine and no wind. We headed into the White Corries and spent the day getting used to axe and crampons, looking at snow pit analysis and avalanche avoidance and also managed to get a summit bagged.


On Tuesday we went up Buichaille Etive Beag in heavy snow and with little visibilty. It was an excellent day for practicing navigation and getting used to operating in more typical Scottish weather conditions.

Wednesday saw us head up to Creag Meghaidh in more strong winds and heavy rain and snow. We gained the snowline below the Window and managed to seek shelter from the winds whilst practising buried axe belays and self arrest.

On Thursday we used the Nevis Range gondola to gain some uplift before walking over Aonach Mor and down to the col below Aonach Beag. We spent 4 hours building a shovel up snow shelter and spent the night in it. An early start on Friday saw us on the summit of Aonach Beag by 8:00am and then back to the cottage in Fort William for lunch.

On Saturday I went climbing with my Dad and we climbed Sron na Larig, an excellent grade II Alpine style ridge in Glen Coe. The conditions were not great, lots of new powder sat on rock but we had a great day.

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