Tying the knot!

So this weekend Sam and Jenny got married at Helensburgh, followed by a reception at Auchendenan House on the banks of Loch Lomond.
It was such a beautiful day, Jenny looked fabulous in the most amazing dress, and Euan and I rocked the modern Highland look to the max...

Later, after a daylong orgy of fine food and booze we all got down to some full-on ceilidh action, over-looked by the stags and portraited Scots ancestry hung on the walls of the Great Hall...
On Sunday Rachel and Euan bailed back to Edinburgh, so I joined a merry band headed up north to soothe our foggy heads in the hills.
Without having brought along a sleeping bag, Sunday night was a cold one but Monday dawned warm and bright. A day that starts with jumping off a waterfall into the Etive river is always going to be good, and this was no exception. After a lazy morning of tea, crepes and flapjack, Tom, Diana & I bid farewell to the others and went round to the Buachaille. After Tom had backed off a solo of The Chasm the evening before, he seemed pretty psyched for a big classic route. Bludgers/Revelation was the obvious choice and on the sweaty walk-in, the mountain had a much friendlier ambience than on any previous visit. However, once in the shady confines of Great Gully the foreboding rock architecture began to do it's thing and my throat dried a little. Ignore it and get on it, I told myself and went about racking up for the first steep groove pitch. This went quickly and pretty easily, bridging upwards from jug to jug with gear between every few moves - my kind of pitch! Flailing on this pitch with wooden fingers last July seemed a distant memory. Bludgers is certainly a route for a very warm day as the lower portion of Slime Wall gets no direct light, and even today Diana and I shivered in the breeze as Tom took time getting slighty lost on the ramp above. From the outset, the climbing on this route is exposed as the gully drops way steeply, and on the upper section this goes from wild to outrageous! Delicate climbing across the ramp on the most perfect rock takes you to the famed Revelation flake - a welcome jug-haul above the growing void. A final easy pitch took us out on to North Buttress and back into the sunlight...
Another beautiful Highland evening on the deserted summit. Bring on the Real Food Cafe. May has been awesome again...

A wee tour...

Went up to Aviemore on Saturday evening. On Sunday, after a night on the beach at Loch Morlich, and the heartiest of hearty breakfasts, Euan and I skiied over to Ben Macdui. The plateau was plastered, it was such an awesome day. We made a short film...

A fat moon over Cairngorm

Some folks skiing Aladdin's Mirror

Spring's promise...

"Before I go home to China, I want to go to strip club..." Not your average work leaving do, and when at 1am I make my farewell, I see the seedy reality of the dingy Lothian Road club has fallen some way short of Scarlett's Sex and the City expectations. Red-eyed and pathetic, clutching a litre of water, 6:30 am finds me at the bus stop, and by 7am I'm leaving Waverley for the Fort. Coming to at Bridge of Orchy there have been two new developments: the east coast grey has been replaced by brilliant sunshine, and the empty seats around me have been occupied by Munro types of the the worst kind. The light and the scenery is spectacular, but it's having an unwelcome effect on my new neighbours - they're getting all excited and shouty. "Martin, did I tell you about mine and Tim's trip to Skye?" No? Well, you'd better tell the whole carriage. I hope you get sucked down to a peaty end with that ridiculous rucksack. What have you got in there anyway? They disembark at Corrour. I eye up likely bogs and my mood lifts. At noon, I meet Gaz at the station and then it's lunch and copious mugs of coffee at the Crucible. Spring has arrived in full force in Lochaber and the contrast to the damp grimness of my last visit is marked. We head down to the Glen with routes in mind and make a sweaty toiling mess of finding Secretaries Buttress on the hillside of Polldubh. With showers threatening we go for the easy option of Secretaries Direct - a fun three pitch route. On the other side of the buttress Gaz fancies a single pitch E1 that he quickly climbs in good style, with only a brief wobble on the crux final moves. After that, it's down to the Hat for a throw on Maisie Gunn. It doesn't feel good though, I can't seem to sort my feet out and I flail. Meanwhile Gaz is doing well on his recent project, and manages to link Killer Instinct before blowing the (what looks) easier final mantle. He gets it next go though, and it wraps up the day nicely - check out the video at the bottom...

On Sunday morning, we take the Corran ferry to check out some boulders in Glen Tarbet that Marshall has previously spotted on one his dawn bird-bothering raids. The boulder below is about 500m from the road up on the hillside and is shaped like a large clamshell. On close inspection it's larger than you initially think, with a bulging wall of black rippled gneiss about 8m high. Gaz climbed the obvious dirty crack and I busied myself with a sit-start through the bulge to the right...

Back down the hillside is a smaller boulder with a slabby nose that gives a cool mantle problem...

Further west, down by the stream, are a collection of heather-topped granite boulders. Gaz off, and on a thin slab...

Somewhere between the real and the imagined...

The chap on the left is a wrong 'un. The one on the right has some issues with the Scottish winter game. Taken on top of No. 3 Gully Buttress, The Ben.

'The Mighty Deerstalker'

Team Stag

Team Hind

16-23 Feb: Sonne und Skiing im Wilder Kaiser!

A foggy day at Traprain Law

Ordinary Route (Summit Buttresss), Stob Coire nan Lochain

Summit Buttress, Stob Coire nan Lochain

With a promising forecast, and a keen Gareth, I took a day off and headed over to Fort William on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning saw us toiling up the zig-zags to Stobbers, which was far less arduous than I remembered from a year ago - must be stronger! The coire was resplendent in the clear air and covered with a thick blanket of powder. It would have been a fantastic day for skiing, with Broad Gully looking ripe for some fresh tracks. Gaz set off on the first pitch which followed innocuous looking snowy ramps, but it soon became apparent that progress was going to be slow as the line followed grooved slabs buried in unconsolidated snow. Following this pitch proved to be a pretty draining experience, as solid axe placements were hard won in the soft stuff and my kick-steps constantly collapsed. Kudos to Gaz as this was insecure and run-out climbing. Arriving at the belay I'd lost my sense of humour completely. As Marshall had spent nearly 3 hours on the first pitch, I figured he was clearly enjoying and savouring the lead, so I was happy for him to press on. At the next belay it was getting late, so with the meat of the route in the bag we traversed off into Boomerang Gully. Back down the track, a pint in the Clachaig, a delicious piece of haddock in Callendar, and home to Edinburgh, having learned a little more about Scottish winter climbing.

Aeolus calls the shots...

Got up at 4:30am for a lift up to the Cairngorms with Russell and Steve. Met Marshall at the Coire Cas car park, where the car rocked in a wind far stronger than that forecast. Turned tail and went for breakfast in Aviemore. Went back to Coire Cas for another look, and walked a short way in towards Coire an t'Sneachda before sacking it off in a wind that was recorded at 132mph on the plateau. Frustrating!

Bowden

Went down to Bowden for the first time in a while. Was keen to get straight on Overhanging Crack, but after a few throws had to accept defeat, bloodied of hand and bruised of ego. Must tape up next time to delay the invitable loss of skin, and buy enough time to get established in the jamming crack. The enthusiastic crowd of onlookers then dispersed, seemingly satisfied that the hype surrounding this route remains undiminished! After doing Main Wall with Viv, sociable bouldering ensued, with a circus of ineptitude travelling between problems and establishing ever lower 'highpoints'. One interesting development was Konnie's Polish Direct to Y Front, but needless to say, it didn't lead anywhere.

Viv concentrating on not making the long move on Transformer (V3) with gnomes Konnie and Gaz rapt in admiration.

Two myths exploded

So far in my as yet short driving career, I'd hadn't really been able to see myself being involved in an accident. Not from arrogance, just a sense that it is statistically unlikely, coupled with the fact that driving a car sensibly isn't all that hard. Accelerating out of a bend past Dalwhinnie early on Sunday morning, I came to realise how it can all go badly wrong very quickly. Hitting a patch of frozen slush, the back end came round suddenly before the car performed a graceful double pirouette. Fortunately the trajectory of this ice dance was straight down the middle of the road and we came to rest in the snowy embankment. Cue nervous giggling all round.

The object of the day was a trip to ski at Nevis Range with Grant and Adam, and here I had a second new insight... Based on an experience of a day at Glenshee a few years back, I'd decided that Scottish skiing is crap - an expensive waste of time and not worth the effort. On this day, the busy pistes were reminiscent of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan as bodies lurched and limbs flailed, with skiers competing to fall down the metres wide strip of brown snow in the worst possible style. So it was a pleasant surprise to have a really enjoyable day at Nevis Range. Of course the weather was awful, with rain all day, but on the plus side it seemed the forecast had deterred the crowds. The thaw conditions had left the snow waterlogged, but there was enough of it on the ground and the pistes were all well put together. Once the quad chair opened, solving Ad's problems with riding the drag on his board, we got some good turns in, doing laps on a piste of floury wind-packed powder.

Snow joy again

Another vist to the crucible of psyche, Banff Crescent this weekend; but again, sadly came home empty-handed. Gaz and I decided to take a look at the East face of Aonach Mor and were in the first gondola car on Sunday morning. Unfortunately the higher lifts were closed leaving a long slog up the hill in fairly grim conditions, passing the tent of some masochists camping under the top chairlift station! With the chairlift wind sock twitching horizontally east like an excitable carrot, snow was blowing across the hill in the steady westerly, and towards the top Gaz's footprints were filling in before I reached them. This made me wonder how wind-loaded the East face would be, and after gearing up at the cabin, we found the top of Easy Gully had a sizeable cornice and appeared to be full of unconsolidated powder. A team ponder ensued for a short time and we had a bit of a dig around, before deciding the avalanche risk was too high and so bailing. I was quite sore to walk away without bagging a route again but it felt like the right decision and Gaz seemed to agree. The word from Blair today was that there is debris from a number of sizeable slides below the crag, so i guess we made a good call!

G. Marshall, aspirant hard man.