A Winter's Tale

It’s not often that I’ve been blessed with good weather in Scotland in the Winter. For an ice climb I felt this day was almost pleasant.

A Winter’s Tale.

For many years I invariably booked a cottage in Scotland to have a week of ice climbing. Well, that was the theory. In practice it was usually a week of eating, drinking and reading sometimes interrupted by an ice climb or walk if the rain and gales decided to have a rest. The final straw came one year when it rained continuously and so hard all week that you even had to think long and hard before setting off on the two hundred yards walk to the pub. After that everyone swore they’d never again risk a week of precious holiday on Scotland so we started to go to Spain for some rock climbing in the sun of the Costa Blanca. But I didn’t entirely give up on Scotland and it wasn’t long before I started to risk the occasional weekend visit. The weather was still usually crap until one year when good fortune finally smiled on us

The trip planned for 2001 seemed to be living up to the ill reputation of all the others. On Monday the forecast had looked perfect, high pressure everywhere but by Tuesday it had mysteriously vanished from the charts. Bad weather was forecast and people were dropping out left, right and centre. First Scottie said he had to work, Mouldie had to watch some paint dry or something, and then Janet and George said they were snowed in. In the end there was only three of us, me and Will from Newcastle and Sally from Charlton.

This left me stuck in a nightmare scenario, a rope of three, one of which was Will, my climbing nemesis. I just knew that he would be after doing something big and this was the nub of the problem. You see, the trouble with Will is that his big winter routes invariably tend to spill over into at least one of the following days. As for me, well, call me soft if you will, but I prefer to do a route that will give me a fighting chance of getting down in time for dinner. So, throughout the journey I tried my best to get him to change his mind. My subtle propaganda extolling the virtues of the shorter routes in Glencoe was an abject failure.

Even having Sally, who had never climbed on ice, as a third on the rope, did not deter him from announcing with a cast iron resolve that we were going to do Castle Ridge. A reasonable choice I’m sure, given that we were a threesome consisting of an occasional ice climber, a beginner and were intending to do a route with an avalanche prone approach. Did I mention that Will was a madman? Unfortunately he’s a Geordie madman so you don’t dare disagree with him.

Fortunately I still had one ally that I thought I could rely on, the weather. But even the normally atrocious weather turned on me. Overnight the promised storms vanished and from out of nowhere a bloody huge anti-cyclone appeared on the scene. It was due to last until Friday but we had decided to travel up on Thursday. There was no escape.

We left in the late afternoon with only a short stop at Dalkeith for fish and chips to break up the journey, not to mention the monotony of what Will insisted was music on his CD player. We reached Roy Bridge at with plenty of time to spare for a couple of pints before turning in for a fairly early night.

The next morning we were up at five o’ clock. A quick look out of the window confirmed the worst; a clear starlit sky and the frost on the car seemed to hint at sub zero temperatures. Still in full on zombie mode we had some tea and toast and were at Torlundy car park at the unheard of hour, for us, of 6.30am. In fact we were the first there, but that still didn’t stop half the population of Fort William from overtaking us by the time we were half way to the CIC hut. Will won’t mind me saying this, but he is an incredible walker. He is the only person I know who can walk uphill as fast as they can go downhill. It’s just unfortunate that his downhill speed is on a par with a tortoise pulling a half a dozen broken down tractors.

So as we inched towards the hut I regaled my flagging companions with some morale boosting anecdotes concerning some past exploits on the mountain. As we passed by, I pointed out to them the campsite of the ill-fated 1987 expedition. This was the time that PT and I had to carry all of Alan Morton’s gear back down the mountain. We had to do that because he had decided to fall headfirst down a gully. It was all right for him; he got a free lift down in the rescue helicopter

Then I recounted the story of the equally ill fated week long CIC Hut meet of 1984 when it rained every single day. This was the time when Robin and me got fed up with dossing around, went out to do a climb and thanks to the zero visibility walked in a big circle back to the hut. Unfortunately we were spotted before we could vanish back into the mist. It was all very embarrassing. Halfway through the week we’d eaten all the food and had to send some people down for more. They came back in the early hours of the morning in a state of near collapse we suspected owed more to alcohol abuse than to the physical demands of walking up to the hut with full rucksacks.

After what seemed like an age and in fact was, we reached the hut and had a few minutes rest before heading off for Castle Ridge.

Walking under the cliffs on the traverse to the start of our route we saw a man soloing up a corner that looked totally devoid of ice and which had no apparent way of escape. Well, he looked as if he knew what he was doing but just to be on the safe side we hurried on and in any case watching him wasn’t proving very good for our nerves. Because it was his idea to come here we let Will go first across the slope below the North and South Castle Gullies. This took us to the starting point of Castle Ridge.

The steep snow slope that Will set off up wasn’t exactly the neve we’d optimistically and naively hoped for. Sally, on her first winter route was remarkably unfazed when he suggested that she might like to climb up a bit so he could reach a decent belay. (Perhaps this happens a lot when she goes rock climbing? I’ll have to ask). By the time I reached the stance, Will was already away and had soloed half way up the next very easy bit. “Bastard” I thought, “I could have led that”. He did though offer me the lead of the next pitch but a cursory glance at a rather evil looking little chimney was enough to make me decline. A few minutes later as I was desperately scrabbling up it I was congratulating myself on one of my better decisions. We all agreed that it must have been one of the two difficult pitches the guidebook mentioned. A slight touch of wishful thinking as it turned out.

I led through and naturally enough belayed as soon as the going started to look hard. Up ahead loomed a short rock wall that seemed to form a complete barrier to any further progress and so with a casual “You may as well do this bit, you’ll be much quicker than me” I handed over the lead. Will did not disappoint and made short work of the only feature that seemed to offer a chance of progress, a steep, thinly iced, rock groove. We lesser mortals had an interesting time of it. In the summer it’s probably a moderate, in winter, in the cold, with a smattering of brittle ice and wearing gloves and crampons it was horrendous. It took me an awful lot of swearing not to mention some whimpering and many shouts of tight rope before I got up. I led the next pitch after getting accidentally committed whilst “bouldering” out the moves. I felt quite pleased with myself. Unfortunately when the others came up my remark about the “awkward little rock step” was met with a look of blank incomprehension from Will and a polite silence from Sally.

By now time was passing, which is nothing unusual, except that too much of it had passed for our prospects of getting up before dark. Time doesn’t half fly when you’re three on a rope. It was becoming clear that this could well be one of those routes that was just a bit longer than the guidebook suggested. It was also clear that the first little chimney hadn’t been one of the difficult bits because in front of us was another awkward looking bit of frugally iced rock.

Luckily we had Will to lead it. Watching him do this, it dawned on me that he actually climbs rock in better style wearing crampons and gloves as opposed to EB’s and bare hands. When I mentioned this later he didn’t seem to think it was much of a compliment. Some people eh?

Anyway, he reached the top just as twilight overtook us. By the time Sally and me had got up full blown night had fallen.

And still we weren’t finished, but at least the going was easier. We stayed roped up for a pleasant little knife edged arete that led to an easy angled snow slope and soon after this, the top of the hill. Sally at last found a place where her mobile phone could get a signal and she could tell her kids that she was still alive and kicking. This, incidentally, was possibly the first ever nighttime ‘phone call from Ben Nevis to Charlton, London, SE7. We congratulated Will on his lead and then congratulated ourselves for getting Will up a winter route before midnight! Even better, it looked as if we’d get down before the pubs closed, mind you there was still the little matter of actually finding the way down to sort out.

To achieve this, Will decided to take us on a tour of the mountain, or at least that’s what it seemed like. We traversed gently downwards and so far to our left that I was sure we were going to end up in Glen Nevis, but as he never stopped reminding us, it ensured that we avoided walking over the top of a crag. Personally, a quick downwards plummet over a crag was starting to seem infinitely preferable to stumbling down a never-ending snow and rock slope.

Still, even unpleasant things come to an end, albeit eventually, and so it was that just after 9pm we reached the dam on the Alt a Muillin. Not that this was easy to cross because the pathetic excuse for a bridge was encrusted in ice; fortunately I was still wearing my crampons. We finally reached the car at the horrendously late, hour of 10pm. I’ll qualify that, for me it was horrendously late. It was still early for Will.

Now we were down, I suddenly realised how absolutely done in I was; I just couldn’t understand it but I could barely put one foot in front of another. Then I remembered I’d carried Will’s rope on the walk in. Yes that must have been it, perish the thought that I might just possibly have been a touch unfit. We reached the pub in time for a pint or two of orange before returning to the chalet and crashing out. We were far too tired to cook a meal or drink our wine, but by God we made up for it the next day.

Saturday’s weather was also kind to us. It rained non-stop all day. It was just as well because we were so knackered that doing another route was out of the question, just climbing into an easy chair was almost beyond most of us. The day began innocently enough with much talk about the route over a lunchtime breakfast at Nevis Sports. We followed this with a browse around the shop and finally a couple of pints in the bar accompanied by much more talk of yesterday’s route. Then it was back to the chalet for a pre dinner bottle of wine or two and more talk about the route. (I can’t remember if we managed the dinner). After all this indulgence we decided a walk was in order which took us to the bar of the Stronlossit Hotel and several pints of pretty good real ale. I can’t remember what we talked about here, but I could have a pretty good guess. Back at the chalet another bottle was opened and emptied. Will seemed to disappear sometime shortly after midnight and the last thing I remember was Sally saying “Better open the last bottle Dave” just before she fell asleep on the sofa.

The weather was good and I suppose we should have done another route; then again it was 11 o’clock when we woke up. Amazingly no one had a hangover, in fact we were all well enough to stop off at the Kingshouse for lunch on the way home. It had been an excellent weekend with a great route done on a day of perfect weather. It was the last of the Ben Nevis ridges for Will, the first one for me and a great first winter route for Sally.

As a result of this success I managed to persuade everyone to come up for a week the following year. Needless to say it rained every day.