Play day in Smith's Gully, Meggy..

Climbing conditions throughout Scotland have been phenomenal for the past three weeks, when we've been working. With time off it was time for us to to go and play on' Meggy' (Creag Meagaidh) and avoid the queues on the 'Ben's' classic ice routes.

I'd done most of the big classic ice routes on 'Meggy' except for the uber classic but serious 'Smith's Gully'. I convinced Fi that with modern ice tools and ice screws, it was a lot easier to climb and protect nowadays, especially given the prolonged cold spell and the low avalanche risk.

It turned out a good choice and we had the route to ourselves, though getting up the upper half of the first pitch was definitely the crux of the route. The deceptively steep upper half of the first pitch had cruddy snow ice and lack of reliable protection. However once up the following four pitches were steep but on superb snow-ice with reliable ice screw runners when needed and for belays. Rock gear for the most part was thin and unreliable and not a route to do in poor snow or ice conditions.

Half way up the route a few hefty snow flurries moved in and almost immediately we were bombarded with small spindrift avalanches, however as the axe placements were so good, it only added to the Scottish winter climbing atmosphere and the obligatory hot aches!

The upper crux, although steep and extremely exposed turned out to have good ice screw protection and the one bomber bit of rock gear on the whole route (a WC hex 6) This gave me the confidence to look down to savoir the mind blowing situation and then shout "yes, it's OK" as I pulled out over onto the easy finishing slopes.

At the top we went left on a 55 metre pitch to avoid the cornice before navigating back off the heavily corniced plateau, tired but happy, down the ridge to the car... :-)

Some unedited video clips and more details and photos on Fi's Marmotte Blog here

Wind scoured and a much better day than expected...

A brighter and less breezy day than on Friday as Thomas and I headed into as almost deserted Coire an t-Sneachda to ice climb.
The avalanche forecast was high but from what I'd seen yesterday many areas were wind scoured and there wasn't as much fresh snow or wind slab as expected.
The initial plan was to climb on a windward facing route to avoid any wind slab. However, contrary to what you'd expect the winds were swirling around the coire and coming from the complete opposite direction and scouring the routes lee route and loading some of the windward routes.
I also new we could easily avoid any cornices and would be totally sheltered in some of  the lee gullies as long as the exit was OK!
Thomas had been on a Winter Skills as well as the advanced Winter Mountaineering course and was wanting to try something a little bit harder and icier today. We headed up to one of the variation routes at the side of the Goat Track.
Unusually there was nobody else about so we decided to climb the main gully which was in excellent condition from top and completely sheltered apart from the odd blast of spin drift.
We topped out onto the plateau which was fine and headed back down via Point 1141 passing some climbers exiting Aladdin's Couloir which was also apparently well scoured and with an easy un-corniced exit.
Some of the other routes such as Crotched and the Trident Gullies do have big fresh cornices as do, Jacob's Ladder and the Windy Col area.
We kept our crampons on until we reached the surprisingly empty car park so the skiing if it was open would have been a wee bit firm!