The Northern Corrie of Lochnagar

I was determined to climb lots of summits and bring up the Munro number after it’s sluggish progress in Torridon. By now people were moaning about the inclement weather that dominated the Torridon trip, they thought that it would continue. People in the club often say with firm voices ‘this is what the weather will be tomorrow….’, often the weather forecast contradicts their statements and the weather turns out to be nice. People hear a severe weather warning on the radio and immediately think we’ll be affected, the weather warning often only applies to localised areas of the U.K. and often comprises heavy fog rather than gales. This time the weather warning heard was for England but not for the Grampians.

The group I was with set off at super early 5.30am. Last night’s storm was still present as a keen group of us walked up beside Loch Muick, I felt concerned that the winds would hinder progress higher up. My concerns were mistaken, the winds were dying out and the day stayed nice right up until we got back to the cars.

The high plateau was covered in rime and large firm snow patches. This made for good progress and a large distance was covered that day, the northern corries were impressive with the gullies filled up and the buttresses rimed up with thin ice. The rest of the club were getting stuck in with this snow climbing business and went up another gully. We met them up on the plateau, Chris Ling's super orange trousers identifying the group from a long distance away! We went our separate ways and we got back to the hostel just as a snow storm set in for the night.

Andy Ward, Mel Harper & Ian Grimshaw near Broad Cairn

Desolate plateau behind the northern corries

Luke price, Rachael Hart and
Phil Endecot at the Glen Shee ski centre

My plan that day was to traverse six summits east of the Ski Centre, that was scuppered when the road was closed in the morning. I felt frustrated, if there was an opportunity later that day I would climb the four summits to the west, as they gave a shorter day. In the end An Socath was missed because of hard progress through the snow. The day was fantastic with blue skies all round and little wind on the tops.

The trek up through the ski grounds was tedious, music bellowing out of speakers filled the corrie and the summits didn’t exactly have a natural feel to them. The ridge out to the final summit escaped all that and gave a grand feeling of desolation. Time didn’t allow for the final summit so a descent to the glen to the north was certainly the preferable option to retracing steps. The day was very cold and even though I was dry, I could feel the chill through my Montane jacket. A good day in the end. Tuesday was spent practising winter skills with good fun building snow caves, no summits climbed though.

The walk out to the road

This was the last day for walking, I wanted to try and climb all the six summits I had my mind on. The winds were slack and the weather misty above 600m, it was definitely milder though the snow still persisted in large amounts. Ben Wright and Rachel Hart joined me for this walk. The walk up was tiring in the deep heather and wet snow though conditions underfoot improved with increasing altitude.

A stone wall lined the summit ridge and provided a good opportunity to time our speed and check bearings before the more challenging parts of the climb. Good progress was made at 4km per hour, each section to be navigated was measured with the compass and an estimated time of completion was calculated. The estimates I made were accurate to +-5min for a 20minute section.

In the white out conditions on the way up to Glas Moal, a deviation of 100m east of the summit was made for a 1km section. Improvements to navigation were needed as this would be a serious situation if it were in the Cairngorms in a full white out. I found that being in a white out played tricks on the mind:- a cairn seen in the distance looks like it’s on top of a steep rise when in fact there isn’t any rise.

These hills were ideal for practising white out:- few cliffs and crags provided large margins for error and the ground was still challenging enough to improve ones accuracy. Blizzard and/or misty conditions made these hills ideal for today. The day finished by the road, Ben ran up to the ski centre to summon the minibus while Rachel and I built a snowman, all the drivers slowed down to take a look at it and I think we made an excellent snow man.

The remaining season in the Highlands remained generally mild with a few exceptions, so conditions weren’t very testing for winter skills.