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.
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