Torridon the scenic way

This weekend  I had some big plans. On Friday I was going to try and have a big day on Ben Nevis linking up as many routes as I could and then on the weekend I was going to head to Torridon to meet the rest of the EUMC and climb something a bit harder. My plans were changed quickly on thursday evening after a quick chat with Lochaber SAIS forecaster Blair Fyffe who said the descent gullies were likely to be loaded with snow and avalanchy. A quick change of plans saw me acquiring a map of Skye for a shot at the Cuillin Ridge.
The Cuillin Ridge is probably Scotlands finest mountaineering excursion and usually take parties 3 days to complete. I chose to attempt it in a single push, and to assure this of happening I wasn't going to take any bivi gear.
At 2am I rocked up underneath the Cuillin. After packing my bag I set my alarm for 4am. I woke at 4 to the sound of rain on the roof of my car. I didn't want to get wet at the start of the day so I set my alarm for another hour of sleep. 5am came and the rain was still there. Did I read MWIS wrong? Im sure it said the weather was going to be good!
In the end I decided to sack it off. If its rain down here it will be falling as fresh snow at the top of the ridge which would make the going very hard. I decided a lie in and a drive was a better bet for the day, so I spent the rest of the day having a leisurely drive around the North West of Scotland and Skye. I made my way up to Torridon, via ex-EUMC member David Geddes house, and even managed to get a bit of work done that evening.
At about 12pm everyone else arrived. I went about finding Alex who I was going to climb with. During the day, seeing that everything was looking a bit wet, I had been formulating a plan. My plan was to consist of climbing 4 mountains in 1 day. The mountain of Beinn Dreag, Beinn Alagin and Liathach all have graded ridges on them. My idea was to climb each of these mountains and then finish by climbing the classic Fuselage Gully on Beinn Eighe. In the end I managed to drum up some more psyched students to come with me so the team consisted of Tom Fitzpatrick, Alex Toomey, Alex McMillan and Max Scherer. 

An early start!

We (maybe I) decided it was best to leave straight away as there was going to be a lot of walking to do. At 1.30 am we all left the car park after no sleep and started walking. At the Beinn Eighe turn off Max and Alex M left us to climb Fuselage Gully, so Alex T, Tom and I continued on our way to Beinn Dearg.
It was still very much night time so we couldn't really see where we were going and predictably we couldn't find out route. In the end we climbed some rotten gully to the top and after a short walk along the summit ridge descended the northern side of the mountain.

At the top(ish) of Beinn Dearg

Once back down in the valley, were we were greated my some rather nice Scottish scenery,  we contoured around to find Beinn Alligin. The weather wasn't anything as nice as predicted. This combined with a extreme lack of sleep saw us decide to bail on our plans. I told Tom and Alex they could head back to the campsite from here, as we were now quite close, and that I would go back and get the car.

On my way out I passed a party walking in and suddenly realised just how early it still was!  Shortly after this I saw some climbers heading up a gully towards the Liathach ridge, then checked my watch. 9.30 am! I cant go back now. I quickly weighed up my options and finally decided that I probably should actually go and climb something and headed up the ridge via Hidden Gully (II). The ridge itself was in great condition with some friendly snow. This allowed me to climb quite fast and overtake lots of team, including a group of EUMC members, which included Alex M and Max.

Assorted Yummicks on the Pinnacles

After finishing the ridge and retrieving my car I got some well earned rest, sleeping from about 4m till 8am sunday morning.
On Sunday I decided that driving home would be a silly thing to do and instead walked in to Beinn Eighe with the idea of climbing Fuselage Gully. As always plans change and a couple of hours later I found myself topping out on West Buttress (IV).

West Buttress Selfie

All in all that was quite a fun and tiring weekend, which was just what I needed before the next couple of weeks in the library to finish my dissertation!
I suspect not many will have read this far, so Hi Mum!
I will add some more pictures later.

Les Alpes

Last week I went to the Alps with Cassim Ladha. It was quite an impromptu trip as Cass called me about a week before setting off as his partner had dropped out. After a bit of thought I decided it was a good idea and agreed to go with him. We took Cass's new car from my house in Yorkshire to France via the Ferry at Dover. Our first destination were the Ecrins, thanks to a slightly more favorable forecast. We arrived in mid afternoon on Saturday and thanks to the long drive we decided to take most of Sunday off before walking up to the mountains in the evening. Our target was Jour de Colere, a 15 pitch ED1 on the Aiguille de Sialouze.
On Sunday I bouldered in the valley while Cass did some work. I didn't climb anything very hard but it was useful to get me used to the rock I'd be climbing on the next day.

Ailefroide Bouldering

We met up later on, had tea and got ready for our walk up to the Refuge du Sele. The walk was quite long and monotonous, with a couple of via ferrata sections, but nothing too hard. 4 or so hours after leaving the valley I was in my bivi bag outside the higher winter hut trying to psyche myself up for next days climb.
I woke at 5am when my alarm went off and sat in my sleeping bag making coffee and eating breakfast. It was still very dark and cold but we could see lights heading up the valley. We didn't want to hang around too much as we didn't want to get stuck behind another team and the weather was due to change in the afternoon.

Jour de Colere (Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

Jour de Colere (Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

As we walked to the bottom of the route it started to get light and I could see the length of the climb. As you can tell from my blog I mostly just boulder with the odd bit of single pitch trad in there. This thing was 15 pitches long. I could just about make out the line, and the location of the Crux F7a pitch.
Cass had the first lead, which after the initial snow climb in rock boots wasn't all that bad. We alt lead from here. I could give a break down of each pitch but this would be very dull. Things started to get a bit more interesting when I got to the bottom of the crux pitch. I had just led the previous F6b pitch so I expected Cass to have this one, but he wasn't feeling it, so I took it again. Up until this point on the route I didn't think we would do it. The weather was supposed to change soon and bring some bad rain and we were going quite slow, but after this pitch there were only 4 more easy pitches to the top. Easy.
This pitch went without too much trouble, although I did cover the crux foot holds in blood after cutting my ankle. I have to be honest I did the pitch "French Free", meaning I aided the crux moves, but its the alps and that's allowed.
Cass seemed to struggle with this pitch and looked quite tired when he got to the top. He set off up the next pitch but it wasn't long before he couldn't go any further and made a belay below an off width. I took over the reigns again and linked the rest of the pitch together with the next. We were now just 2 short pitches from the top, which we would be able to link together. Cass set off up this final link up but didn't get far before he didn't want to do any more. After a look at the topo I worked out that we could get to the abb line with a diagonal abseil. I lowered cass off and followed myself. It seemed to take an age to get to the valley floor thanks to the huge number of abbs needed but we managed it and walk out to bivi next to the hut again.
The next day saw us drive to Chamonix, via Italy. I wasn't feeling too psyched in Chamonix to try anything hard. I didn't want to commit to a big route seeing how close we got to the top of Jour de Colere then had to back off. I was psyched for something short and hard, but Cass didn't want to do this. In the end we settled for a walk from the Aiguille do Midi, across the Vallee Blanche and down the Mer De Glace. I quite enjoyed this although it wasn't too hard. We saw a lot of the Alps this way at least.

Vallee Blanche (Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

(Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

(Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

(Photo Credit: Cassim Ladha)

Requein Hut

On the way back we stopped at Font for a quick boulder. This was the first time ive been here and im pretty keen to get back.

Font

After a day off at home I drove back to Edinburgh, stopping at Bowden on my way past. I managed to send Sprung, my first font 7c. It went down without too much trouble on the day. Im really psyched to get some more hard boulders done now!

Oh look a moustache

Saturday was looking promising for the return of winter conditons so Joanna, Ondrej Mandalu and left on friday night for Ben Nevis. We were kindly given some floor space at Liam Ingram and Fergus Cuthill's flat in Torlundy.
After a 5am wake up we were heading up to the ben. This was really very early for this time of year but we had big plans. Liam was to climb with Ondrej. They intended to do the big 4 ridge in a day, those being; Castle Ridge (III), Tower Ridge (IV,3), Oberveratory Ridge (V,4) and North East Buttress (IV 4). Joanna and I were intending to climb Sioux Wall (VIII, 8). I thought this might be in as it is quite high up and sits back a little so should hold snow well on holds.
Once at the CIC hut I could tell that sioux wall was very unlikely to be "in", but we decided to go up into the Number 3 gully area anyway for a look. We were going to go "Euli Steck" style on number 3 gully, this means moving really quickly on easy terrain, but Joanna was struggling to front point, as she had a blister on her heel. After abit of thought we decided it was best to head back down to Fort William and go for a walk.
After a quick coffee we drove down Glen Nevis to Steall Hut Falls. On the walk along the path we saw lots of interesting rocks. I noticed that the rock type changed along the walkin bettween metamorphic rocks, with lots of kinks and deformation, to more uniform igneous looking rocks. There were also alot of rocks with shiny tints to them, no it wasn't water. I suspect that this was a sheety silicate of some sort, possibly muscovite. There were also a few quartz inclusion, inculding this intersting looking one.

We kept on walking along the gorge which leads from Glen Nevis to the Steall Hut falls. After the gorge the valley open up to a nice meandering river, with big rocky banks, and a large flood plain. The falls sit at the other side.

We found lots of nice rocks around the river. The following one looks like it could have really big feldspar crystals which have been altered on the outside giving it them the two-tone texture. It is more likely that they are infact small lithic fragments, as they would be very large for single minerals. 

 There were also some nice, large scale, features higher up in the glen. The rocks to the left of the falls showed some nice bedding and on the oposite side of the glen there was a large fold. It is not a very big picture so I shall describe it. One limb of the fold runs from almost vertically up to the top of the obvious ridge and then bend to the right on the summit behind this.

Liam and Ondrej only managed to climb one ridge, Observatory ridge, although Ondrej did go onto solo Tower Ridge, while Liam went back.