Route 1

I knew things were going to go well this weekend when we overtook someone on the walk in to the Ben, this was something that hadn't happened for many years and was clearly a sign that my strict training regime of using unsalted butter on the bacon butties at breakfast was working.

When we arrived at the CIC hut we could clearly see our objective, Route 1*** VI,6. A text to Adam the night before had confirmed it had seen a recent ascent and was in nick.

CCarn Dearg Buttress

We traversed in from the bottom of the the Curtain and belayed at the bottom of the chimney. Andy got stuck into the first pitch, or more correctly, got stuck in the first pitch. After about an hour and only 10m of upward progress he took off his sack and clipped it to a runner and headed on up.  The route follows an obvious chimney for 3 pitches and is quite sustained with a very tight squeeze at the top to exit the chimney. The route went really well, but would have been much quicker without sacks. Andy was elated at the top, his first grade VI at the age of 50. We descended down Ledge route.

Pitch 2

Sunday we decided to head to Ben Dothaidh near Bridge of Orchy. We had had an extra pint the night before so we were a little late setting off and a little slower walking in. We didn't overtake anyone because there wasn't anyone else about, total isolation.

Today's target was Menage a Trois*** V,6, and when we arived at the crag conditions looked good. It was getting on for midday when we got started, and then the first pitch took 2 hours because of following the wrong line, lack of gear etc. I set off up pitch 2 knowing we needed to move quicker, but found good gear hard to find and the climbing really hard, after 30m I was running out of gear so belayed and let Andy lead through.

Pitch 3

It didn't get any easier and by the time I set off on the fourth pitch we were climbing by headtorch. We topped out at 6:30pm and had to find our way down in deteriorating weather and very strong winds.

Ueli Steck could have climbed the Eiger , the Grand Jorasses and the Matterhorn in the time it took us to get up about 130m of Scottish mixed.

All in all a great week end.

Finishing pitch 3 in deteriorating light.