This was designed as a weekend for Barry and I to push our limits. We're ambitious sorts, and spending plenty of time on the hills in summer conditions naturally leads to a desire to play on the mountains when they're wearing a full winter garb. We'd been expanding our boundaries for a few years now, with trips over snow and ice, using crampons, using walking axes, bivvying in the wilderness, scrambling steep routes, and the next natural step was to try winter ice climbing.
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| Cairngorm plateau from Meall a'Bhuachaille |
We took a long weekend and warmed up on the Friday by driving out from Glasgow to Schiehallion. The empty car park swirled with scouring snow flurries and we could only see the first hundred yards of the path. I silently worried that setting off up on unknown hill in full blizzard conditions was a dumb idea, but bit my tongue for fear of appearing a wimp. I looked at Barry and waited for him to say that oo, the weather's a bit poor, he didn't fancy it much and shouldn't we just press on to somewhere more comfortable where they served food and had pool tables, thus saving my face and our necks. He didn't. We threw crampons in our sacks, pulled on full waterproofs and set off.
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| Climbing Schiehallion | Under the cloudbase | Icy descent | ||
The wind didn't slacken, but the clouds lifted as we climbed, and by the time we summitted, my fabulously cosy new boots skittering over frost-gripped boulders and ice-cemented scree, we could see fifty miles across the snowy Highlands. It was far too cold to loiter at the summit; ice condensed in my exposed eyebrows and I was soon shivering.
With Schiehallion conquered we set off in good humour for Aviemore and the night's accommodation. Liam Lynch on the stereo, sun on the windscreen. As co-pilot I plotted routes and read pace-notes; alas Barry wasn't paying much attention to my suggestion that the sun may not have penetrated the dark trees that fringed a sharp, narrow bend, and with inexorable slowness the car slid over the unthawed road surface to fall, lopsided, into a deep ditch. Wheels span forlornly when Barry gunned the engine to get us out and we were stuck, the two of us left to clamber up and out of the passenger door.
Fortunately they're bred hardy and hospitable in the Highlands, and a short trawl through the nearby houses yielded a willing farm labourer and a capable Land Rover. Less than half an hour after we'd fallen in we were back on our way, the car unmarked and Barry blaming me, the illegally worn tyres and those stupid trees for his inability to drive in a straight line.
The car failed us again as we attempted to drive up the pitifully shallow incline from Aviemore to the Youth Hostel. Trying to put 220hp through nearly tread-free front tyres on a snow covered road just left us stationery with wheels spinning faster than a Max Power car park burn-out. Whilst we span out in fourth gear, every other car that followed - a Ford Ka, a twenty year old VW camper van, a heavily laden Volvo estate - cruised untroubled up the same hill. We slunk back to Aviemore and booked into a different Youth Hostel.
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| Barry's car, in a ditch | Into the Corrie | Corrie an t-Sneachda | Kitting up | Confident |
Saturday was a write off. We managed to get the car up the hill to meet our guide,the ridiculously energetic Smiler, at the ski centre car park. From there we tramped in low grey cloud through deep fresh snow into Corrie an t-Sneachdha. Smiler broke trail and kept up a mountain professional's pace over the untracked powder. I panted in his wake. After an hour and a half we reached a cluster of rocks that Smiler claimed was surrounded by large cliffs and stunning views. I smiled disbelieving agreement at the murk that engulfed us.
The snow was in loose, poor state. No slope was suitable for playing with ice-axes, the gullies were far too laden with dangerous powder to attempt a climb. We eventually found a snow bank, dug warm but claustrophobic snow caves and retreated from the mountain for a dozy night in the Glenmore Lodge bar.
The capricious Scottish weather worked its magic overnight. Cloud lifted, cold descended. Loose powder froze into decent ice, deep clear blue skies reigned when we looked out at 6:30am on Sunday morning.
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| Smiler leading Goat Track Gully | The cliffs of Corrie an t-Sneachdha | Relief at the summit | ||
The same route into the same corrie was transformed. The trail, broken from our passage the day before, got us to the same cluster of rocks in half the time, and now these rocks were surrounded not by damp grey clag, but shadowed in three directions by towering cliffs of rock and ice. As we kitted up, doing up laces, tightening crampons, moving ice-axes into shaking hands, I looked up at the gully lines picked out in snow far above us and gulped the dry swallow of a vertigo sufferer at the prospect of following the feathering cracks across the cliff face.
Smiler didn't hang about in the bright cold. With a few cheery instructions and encouraging chirpiness he carefully dragged Barry and I up to a cleft he informed us was a simple climb called Goat Track Gully. Nervously gripping climbing axes I followed Smiler over the shelves and ledges.
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| Don't look down... | ...oops | Hidden Chimney | Summitting | |
Although I knew at some intellectual level that I was pretty safe - on an easy climb, harnessed to a tight rope attached to the rock face and a mountain guide with over thirty years' experience - I was gripped by nerves and fear. I tried to emulate Smiler's smooth deliberate movements that seemed to fuse him to the rock face, but no matter how hard I focused on keeping calm, not panicking, and not looking down I still felt I was rushing and on the edge. A skittering novice barely in control.
Yet life's biggest rewards come in the conquering of fear. I watched Smiler swing easily over the ledges, set my jaw to ward off nerves and, scrabbling, hasty, pulled myself over the same steps and cracks to stand jubilant and relieved at the top of the route.
With endorphins and adrenalin blasting through my system and the sun still tracking across the blue-white sky we headed back down into the corrie to do another, harder route: Hidden Chimney. Smiler launched himself up the congested route, the rope attached to his harness weaving a route through crag, climber and other rope. I followed, overtaking others dawdling on different lines that crossed ours, and panting apologies as my crampons snicked into ice inches from other climbers' belays. Although steeper, I was starting to get used to the exposure, and despite a hairy moment when Barry slipped and his sliding weight threatened to pendulum me across the face at painful speed, by the time I reached the sunny summit I was thoroughly comfortable and chuffed with the days labours. After a celebratory cuppa with a view of the expansive summit plateau, we walked jubilantly off down one of the skiing pistes and said goodbye to Smiler.
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| Meall a'Bhuachaille | Sweating up | Chilling out | An Lochan Uaine | From Ryvoan Bothy |
Exhausted, Barry and I promised each other we wouldn't walk on the Monday unless the weather was good. We both swore loudly at 7am the next morning when we woke to find sun streaming through the window and another cloudless Scottish winter day in prospect, but dragged aching limbs out of bed and into smelly clothes.
We opted for a short blast up Meall a'Bhuachaille, the rounded hill behind the youth hostel. Being a working Monday, we had the hill to ourselves as we climbed through the tree line to reveal views of the entire Cairngorm massif. From the summit we could see fifty miles through the frozen air, north to Inverness and south west to Ben Nevis.
The short walk out passed Ryvoan Bothy, worth noting for the copy of the entertaining journal that lay on the table in the single soot blackened room.
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| Loch Laggan | Ballachulish Bridge | Caning it along the A82 | ||
With time to spare before flights back to London we drove back to Glasgow through Fort William. We shot through through empty glens on quiet roads, with crystal clear views over Loch and forest of distant snow-capped mountains. The finest landscape Scotland has to offer, witnessed under perfect conditions and with the pleasurable exhaustion of a long weekend on the hills. Even with a flight to catch this was a journey I wanted to never end.