A Golden Autumn Gem of a weekend

The good forecast for Friday and Saturday saw us packing the lightweight camping and scrambling kit.

We headed up from Cairngorm and over a freezing and misty Ben MacDui plateau to Coire Sputan Dearg all wrapped up to climb the classic Crystal Ridge (Diff). At this point we had every stitch of spare clothing on and were wondering whether climbing and camping out at almost 4,000 feet was such a good idea! Fortunately as we descended the loose glissade gully the skies cleared and the sun shone.

After topping out from our three star climb we walked down to our spectacular nights high camp at Loch Etchachan. Clear skies and sparkling stars meant a frosty start on Saturday. However our east facing climbs on Creagan A' Choire Etchachan get the sun from first light and it was surprisingly hot and I really mean HOT! It could have been climbed in a t-shirt and shorts and several of the classic routes such as Talisman were completely bone dry too!! We climbed Quartzvein Edge (Mod) in the golden Autumn sunshine before heading back over to our sunny camp for lunch.

As it was such a good day we took the most scenic route back. We walked down to the Shelterstone taking lots of photos and videos and then around Loch Avon before heading back up Coire Raibert and over Cairngorm homeward. A couple of classic Autumn days and two gems in the bag...

Where was everyone? Despite the excellent climbing conditions especially on Saturday we didn't see any other climbers about apart from on Pine Tree Route, Stag Rocks.

YouTube videos of the weekend later this week....!