Gwilym's Adventure Blog

Today Mark and I have been working for Bridgwater College teaching navigation and moorland walking skills to a group of students on Dartmoor. Tomorrow they will be let loose on the moor themselves to be self sufficient for 2 days.

I have now packed up and moved back down south as I am due to start working down here again next week, I have of course heard that it is snowing and looking good again back up in Scotland. Always the way isn't. Still, got to earn a living some how.

Today Adam and I climbed Point Five Gully V 5 on Ben Nevis. Adam suggested we got up at stupid o'clock (4 am) for an early start. We were walking by 5am and reached the bottom of the route to see a party get on in front of us. After a small delay, we headed up the route and spent the next 7 hours being battered by spindrift and lumps of ice. There is a lack of photos as I couldn't even see my feet or axes let alone take a picture. We topped out into a whiteout and had to use the compass to get down from the top. We finally made it back to the car at 17.30. 12.5 hrs after leaving it! The guide book says: Probably the most famous ice gully in Scotland, perhaps in the world A pair backed of Hadrian's Wall saying the ice was poor and the team who were behind us on Point Five backed off aswell. There were a few parties out today including a team on Tower Ridge and Observatory Butress but the conditions were such that we couldn't see how they got on.

Today Paul and I went to Meall An Fhir-Eoin Beag as we hoped it would be drier out there than inland. On arrival we took shelter from the rain in a cafe and looked wistfully out of the window as we drank our coffee. Suddenly, the skies lightened and it began to clear so we made a run (well fast walk) to the crag hoping it would hold out. We were right, apart from the odd shower it was a dry day with views of Muck and Eigg. We climbed 4 routes sharing the leads on each one, they were: Crater Comforts VS 4c Volcane E1 5b Yir VS 4c and An Toiseach VD with the An Deireadh VS 4c finish An excellent day all round

For the last 5 Days I have been on a Winter Mountain Leader Assessment with Steve Spalding (High Expectations) based in The Cairngorms There was a mixture of sunny Alpine Days and claggy Scottish Days. Over the 5 days I was assessed on teaching axe and crampons, using a rope on steep ground and a 3 day (2 nights in a snow hole) expedition looking at Navigation and self preservation in winter. All the members of the group passed the assessment and a good time was had by all. There is still reasonable snow cover on the plateau which should hold for a few more weeks though it is starting to collapse into the rivers and streams. It looks like there is very little Winter Climbing left in Corrie An T'Sneachda although Summer routes look to be climbable (crampons on approach would be needed) both there and on the other side of the plateau ie Hells Lum and Stag Rocks.

Today, Rob and I decided to see what was left to climb on the west face of Aonach Mor. The answer appears to be not much. We aborted our original plan to climb Golden Oldie as it looked like a really wet summer scramble slip fest and choose one of the loosely defined gully lines further south. Although there was copious amounts of water running around, we found a line of unbroken snow around 350m long that led us to the summit plateau. Having topped out we were hit by winds in excess of 60mph which persisted until we had descended halfway down The Goose.

In the centre of the picture, just above and to the left of Adam's left shoulder is the seal who followed us all day. Today we decided to go out on Loch Linnie in an Open Boat. Adam is going for his 2 Star paddlesport so this was a good oportunity to get some training done. We paddled around between the islands and saw many birds and a number of seals. The sea bed was littered with muscles (mainly old shells though) and amazing sea weeds. The weather was much better than forecast though we could see how stripped Aonach Mor, Carn mor Dearg and The Ben had become with more grass than snow on the west faces. Hopefully the weather will improve enough to get out climbing again tomorrow.

Today Graham from the Scottish Avalanche Information Service allowed me to tag along and see what he does. First we played with the Avalanche Transceivers just to make sure we could find each other in the worst case scenario. We then moved round to an East facing slope where Graham allowed me to dig his test pit for him (how kind!). It was interesting to see the advanced tools used such as lolly sticks! Graham however had a wealth of knowledge and it was good to see the background to the daily reports that I read.

Today Adam, Mark and I (and a number of other teams) went to the West Face of Aonach Mor as the weather forecast was favourable. We chose to climb Western Rib III which is 500m long and tops out virtually on the summit. The plan was delayed by a technical problem on the Gondola but this was resolved and away we went. An excellent walk in, an excellent route and great weather. We climbed solo intially and then switched to moving together when the ground got a bit steeper. Whilst descending Aonach Mor we could see the skiers and boarders were having a great time and the snow was pretty good on the pistes.

Again the weather forecast was not in our favour so Mark and I spent the morning Mountain Biking at the bottom of Nevis Range. We managed to aovid most of the squalls during the morning and got back inside as it got really wet. Tomorrow looks more optismistic

Beaten again by the foul weather today, Mark and I agreed that we would not be going out on the hill and settled for a few hours at Alan Kimber's bouldering wall and some retail therapy around Fort William's gear shops.

Today the weather forecast was not very optimistic so Mark and I decided to go to the Ballachulish Horseshoe. It started off well but the snow got progressively deeper and the wind started to pick up and we decided to turn round and get down before the weather got too bad

Today we had an early start (05.30) and drove to The Cairngorms where we found out the road was closed due to snow. This opened at 9am so after a big fry up we headed into the corrie to climb. We bumped into Alan Halewood with his clients and after a brief disscussion on routes headed up The Seam IV 5. There was plenty of snow around but I couldn't help wishing it was a bit firmer as the route would have been easier. We topped out about 5pm and made it back to the car before it got dark.

Today as the weather report said it would be a bit windy 65mph+ on the mountains I went to Loch Ness to search for Nessie. After a thorough search of the loch (about 10 minutes) I decided that she wasn't about today and therefore met up with Nick to go for a walk. We only had to go up to about 300m to find the snow and had a nice 15km yomp around. Got back to Fort William to find it snowing really hard. Yipee!!

Although I had planned to go out today, I remembered I had an assignment for my OU Geosciences degree to complete so I stayed in to finish that. All done! Just looked out the window and it seems some snow fell yesterday. Should be good for tomorrow when hopefully I will be back out on the hill.