Glen Morriston

I spent a few days with Chris Dickinson at his new house in Glen Morriston.

 The first day we headed up Creag a'Chaorainn with the intention to climb the grade II East Ridge. The going was slow wading through the fresh powder so one on the top we managed a shorter grade III climb,

The second day was a bit warmer so we decided to explore the potential of a nearby quarry for some dry tooling.  We top roped various problems and experimented with ramming the axes in the rock in as many way as we could imagine.

Avalanches, Sleeping under stones and Powder swimming

It was great to catch up with Max Hunter for a day in the Cairngormes. We attempted The Seam, however bailed as the route was super snowy but turfs very unfrozen!

Max on The Seam

I then met up with Annie LE and Huw for a two day winter mission in Glen Avon. Naving across the plateau went very well however our descend down Diagoanal Gully turned pretty scratchy. Whilst testing the stability of a side cone, it avalanched, wiping Huw off his feet carrying him a good 10m down hill. This put us on edge so we made a hasty decent and out the way of the unstable windblown snow.

Descending Diagonal Gully

Once in the Glen, we were short on time so headed straight to shelter stone to sleep.  This is a huge boulder with a space for 5-6 people to sleep.  As expected it was a super cold night with snow blowing onto us through the build stone walls.

Glen Avon

The next day, we tried to climb Castle Ridge on Shelter Stone wall.  Poor gear and bad route finding meant we didn't get very far before bailing and wading up 1m powder back onto the plateau and straight to the Skiing-du.

On the third day, we managed a climb!  The Hastons Line, III, on Mess of Pottage was super snowy but we all had a lead and finished slightly later then hoped...

Annie (Green blob) leading off on The Haston Line

Topping out in the dark before naving across to 1147 and down to the Ski Center car park.

Winter "train" in

I have wanted to do this for ages. Catch a train from Fort William to the Corrour station on Ranoch Mor then hike into the bothies and climb some hills. On top of this adventure it was winter and I was told that there were 20 soldiers on a training mission watching the vallies goings on.

Over looking the Mamores from the Grey Corries.

The Grey corries was my first target, so after an early start, I headed up the glen and started wading up on the the tops.  After two summits, an enormous amount of buffeting and with two very tired legs, I decided to bail off the ridge back to the bothy for a well earned rest.

The Grey corries from Stob Ban

For day two I adjusted my ambitious plan of two Munros to climb Stob Ban instead.  The climb was really nice, strong winds but perfect skies graced me all day with no one else around,

Stob Ban during a beautiful winter day