A fantastic 2 days climbing in Scotland with Mountain Motion guide Richard Bentley last week. Both days we practiced belay building and rope work to help us lead routes and bring others up safely. Richard climbed along side us supervising our technique and made the climbs look very simple.
With lots of powder loading the slopes Richard took us onto the ridges to minimise any avalanche risk, we still had to do some wading and swimming through the deep stuff to get to the bottom of the climbs, but once on the ridges progress was much easier.
Day 1: Climbing on the Ben on the Douglas Boulder (South West Ridge). This is a 180m climb at about grade 3 with a short abseil off the end into the Douglas Gap.
Day 2: Climbing in Glen Coe, a steep walk in to climb Stob Coire nan Lochan (1115m) via a mixed route called Boomerang Arete. Two hard pitches to start with (lead by Richard) made the going tough but once we passed this the climb was on neve and ice and the progress was a lot easier. The summit of SCnL is small and has that perfect mountain feel to it, a few photos a quick drink and an easy descent through powder down Broad Gully to the walk out ............. another great day :)
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| Central Buttress (SCnL) |
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| South, Central, and North Buttresses (SCnL) |
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| Stob Coire nan Lochan summit |
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| Descending to North Gully (SCnL) |
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