Dark Souls

With ice on our minds we had planned to head west and sample the delights of Beinn Udlaidh, however reports of insufficient build up and a bad weather forecast convinced us to head for the east.

We based our self’s in gals-alt shiel bothy, tagged onto the lodge at the side of Loch Muick, it's a wee cracker, with a great fire and loads of space.
The next day we headed for Lochnagar, it was decent weather with blue skies and a fresh breeze. Very impressive corie, so good when you get to the rescue box and it opens out in front of you. Ended up doing Central buttress, it was short and pretty scowered, a good option I reckoned as all the other buttress looked loaded with unconsolidated snow.


Was pretty easy and busy though so planned something a bit more exciting and out the way the next day, settled on “souls on fire” a IV,5 on the SE buttress of Dubh Loch.


We headed for our planned route nice and early, really easy from the bothy perhaps an hour up a steady gradient. The loch had a few feet of ice on it, so wandered across it to the base of the cliff.

We headed towards the buttress, however another line had caught my eye!
It starts just right of “Dogleg” up a left facing corner, mixed moves on turf and rock lead to a snow platform were good gear can finally be had, a better protected mixed chimney was then followed to the belay bellow the “SOF” crux chimney.




We tried this first but it didn’t go on Marks initial foray, I got further but backed off after the ice started falling down, a lot of faff with us both up then down climbing.

Another chimney 10m to the right proved to be the solution. It starts as a mixed gully, but quickly gets interesting, changing into a steep awakened grove with ice on one side and unconsolidated snow with a few bits of useful rock and turf on the other. The pitch culminates in an overhanging chimney, below this I had to bash about a meter cube of snow down to make a platform, I then contorted onto this and managed to clean out a muddy crack getting a pretty good bulldog. With some allright gear I got the balls to make the crux moves; a very tenuous hook was used to get up and lean out. Once standing, two good placements in solid turf were had at full stretch, with only air for feet a thrucky sequence of ice axe pull ups and lock offs was required to get established. The feet can then be swung up and with some crazy wide chimneying bridging and egyptians the difficulties are soon over. After another few moves on steep turf the chimney can be exited on rope stretch to a nice belay, what a brill pitch!


Luckily the route joins south west buttress at this point and we raced up the easy snow slopes in the half light.
By the time we topped out it was nice and dark, I had lost my head torch a few weeks back and mark couldn’t find his. So we descended carefully, plunging thro the crusty snow into holes, up to Marks head on one occasion. Finally got to the loch and as we wondered back over the ice, the moon appeared to guide us back to the bothy.

So great weekend seen two new venues seen and a first ascent done, awesome.

Here the details of the route Hopefully get it submitted to the SMC soon;

Thanks to Mike C for the Photo of SEB

Dark Souls 160m IV,4 *. A.Main, M.Jarvie. 20-Jan-2008

A nice winter line up mixed groves and chimneys. Start just below and right of Dogleg; below a left facing groove, next to a small tree.

1. 50m Climb the groove to a snow platform and good gear, follow the chimney and exit right, to belay were the route crosses "Souls on fire".

2. 50m Continue rightwards to the next chimney and follow this with increasing difficulty to an overhang bulge(crux) , surmount this and belay in an obvious cave above.

3. and 4. 60m Join SE Buttress and follow easy ground to the top.

An Educational New Year

back from an awesome (although ethically abominable!) sports climbing holiday in El Chorro to find the mountains lookin wintry i could hardly contain myself! off we headed for a sunny day in Corrie Sneachda on sun 30th; mark and I did goat track gully for his first winter route, was ace but it seemed to be over too quickly! Joseph hooked up with Oli to do Aladins couloir for his first route and was waitin three hours at the rescuebox for us to mince around the plateau enjoyin the sunshine! unfortunately this intense cold dissuaded him from joining us on a further excursion into (for us) uncharted cairngorm territory over new year.........

Mark posing for the 2008 Snow & Rock catalogue

i then met up with andy and andy at the shetlerstone where a comfortable night was had by all. Me and Andy(Main) headed off towards Creagan a' choire etchachan to explore future possibilities and see if the east facing aspects may still be holding any whiteness (as Hells Lum appeared to be). an easy walk over the col got us to our destination and there appeared to be some reasonable ice around..... the likes of Red Chimney and djibangi were not in but looked well worth doin at some point. Winter Route looked do-able so andy set off up reasonable looking ice. all was well until he was fully comitted and then all the ice started to collapse and the best retreat was to be from an ice pillar at the top of the first pitch. so andy bravely led on through mud, blood and water and continually showered me with head sized chunks of ice - LESSON ONE: do not attempt ice routes when there is rain on the way!

A dignified retreat.....................

and dry night was enjoyed at the hutchison memorial hut and hogmanay was well celebrated in the company of some walkers and a fine array of beverages! we didnt last much after 9pm and celebrated the arrival of the new year in istanbul before hitting the sack! the morning brought nothing but sore heads and more drizzle...... so we minced around and finally decided to head back via Ben MacDui. we navigated perfectly to the summit cairn then reallised that along the way i had dropped the map and we were on the plateau in a white out. LESSON TWO: try not to lose your map! we took a bearing of just off North heading for the edge of Corrie Lochain and met some other walkers about half way along travelling on a bearing 10degrees off ours and heading for the same place so we happily joined them and retreated for a shower and a warm bed.

Lewis then stopped by on his way south and despite a knarly weather forecast we headed out for what turned out to be a very bad day for decision making see report on UKC although many lessons were learnt, one is particularly obvious, but somehow we managed to neglect it - LESSON THREE: NEVER ATTEMPT TO CLIMB GULLIES DURING SNOWFALL.

these are all fundamentals of mountaincraft and it annoys me that ive ignored them but it takes a situation to remind oneself of the neccessity of apply basic theoretical knowledge and experience (what little i have). these small incidents have told me two things; go back and re-read all my theory books and trust my intuition when on the hill! despite these encounters with the mountain, it was a brill few days and all these things increase your experience and i shall not be making such mistakes again. i hope others may also benefit from what we have written and alls well that ends well!

Is this the Grey Man of Ben MacDui????

snaps fae the corrie

VIDEO?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZu8zBm7qQ

Mincing in the Gorms

21st December 2007
We parked the car at the ski centre and left for Corrie an t'Sneachda at midnight, lit by the moon and the shooting stars we walked in our very own Gorms wonderland, we got into our base at the lochans at about 1am.
I pitched my wee tent and Andy 'pitched' his sleeping bag on the deck, ready to try out its cold temp range during what turned out to be a nippy night.I forgot my sleeping mat so slept on ropes to get my ass off the cold ground, they made a surprising difference, well recommended if your tight for space.
We got up at 730ish and headed up Goat Track Gully (II), it was lean but fully iced up in the lower sections, Andy led off and stormed up the first pitch, dinner plating ice flying down behind the swing of his axes, i took a couple of direct hits, one large piece smacked my shoulder, and a smaller(thankfully) bit managed to clock me right in the tatties.I hung onto the ropes as my testiclons tried to jump into my stomach, Andy, unaware, carried on hacking away at the ice in anger.oooooyahhhhh!!!!!!!
Andy led the next pitch after I had a wee freak out on the ice when i realised I hadnt ever placed an ice screw, that pitch was the hardest but i felt better on the terrain by the end of it.Then it was a ramble to the top and a quick descent down to the corrie, to pack up the tent and head home to the Lowlands for festive beer and pies and fags and shite disco dancin...