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.