February 14 Conditions

Thursday 20th February 2014

Another good week in the north west highlands

I was working in the north west highlands again this week.

We had a real mix of weather with a glorious sunny 'alpine' day on Fuar Tholl, a wild day on Beinn Bhan, a warm day dry tooling, an excellent day on Liathach and a wet day of technical skills to finish.

I was out climbing with Rob, Calum and Andy this week and we covered lots of winter climbing skills and did routes up to grade 3 which made up a great week.

Friday 14th February 2014

North West Highlands Intro Climber

For the last week I have been in the North West Highlands working for Martin Moran running an intro to winter climbing course.

On the first day we headed into Fuar Tholl to do a refresher day. After some skills work we headed up into the Coire and witnessed an avalanche coming down Access Gully so we headed up Right-Hand Gully instead. Day two was a relatively good weather day so I headed into Liathach with Mark and Des to climb George. Day 3 was another wild day on the hill so we opted for a low level day at Leacanashie Woods Crag to practise rope work skills and dry tooling.

The first half of Wednesday was pleasant until the next front arrived with more snow and wind. We headed up on Beinn Bhan and climbed a pleasant grade 1 ridge on the south side of Coire Each. This gave Mark, Claire and Des plenty of opportunity to do some leading and practise their rope management. On the final day we had hoped to climb on Meall Gorm near the Bealach na Ba but the road was closed so we headed to Ardheslaig Crag to practise some abseiling and prussicing.

Although we had some wild weather this week it looks like we got away quite lightly in comparison with other parts of the country and the NW highlands aren't quite as buried in snow as other parts of the highlands.