Winter has arrived in Scotland, not sure how long it's staying but it's nice to see white hills again even if it's dark and cold in our un-insulated little cottage!
Loz was super keen to try and get winter climbing... my initial response was a little muted. But that was partly because I was working on Sunday so only had one day off, and I wasn't sure at first at least that I wanted to spend it freezing in some dark cold corner system in the mountains..
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| Views of Sgurr nan Gillean on the left |
He persevered, and dangled a carrot I had to snatch - Pinnacle Ridge on Sgurr nan Gillean. We had nearly climbed this last winter but there had been a lot of powder snow and the guide suggested this made it hellish. Looking at UKC timings for the route varied from 10 - 15 hrs!
During Loz's luring phase (I was sold on it once he mentioned it, but I didn't want to over play my hand hehe) he suggested we could leave Contin at 5am and would be back there at 7pm.. I knew this wouldn't be the case but loved the idea of an adventure.
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| A fine morning |
The alarm was set for 4am, but I was up at 3.30am. On the drive over we were inches away from hitting a stag on the road - Loz did some amazing swerving and braking..
We made good time and were soon walking in from Sligachan as it started to get light. It was very exciting as I'd wanted to do something on the Cuillin for years. Pinnacle Ridge is known to be one of the finest alpine (long) type routes in Scotland. It is given grade IV in winter but can vary depending upon conditions.
After a few hours we got to the gearing up point and it was shaping to be a fantastic day, no wind, crisp, clear skies - what's not to like. The route goes over 5 pinnacles (the 5th is the summit) and these increase in difficulty/complexity after the 2nd one.
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| You can just see the pinnacles - not great from this angle |
With the odd pitch, moving together and soloing we quickly made progress over the first 2. Number 3 was fine but did involve an awkward abseil off its back. Finding the tat and chain did mean that we now knew which pinnacle we were on though (it wasn't clear at that point!). At this point we were cruising at it was 12:45pm... We foresaw an early finish..
The views were amazing and we could see the Skye bridgett the East, Ladhar Bheinn in knoydart, Portree to the North and the Outer Hebrides to the West.
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| easy ground at the start |
The fourth Pinnacle was fine going up, but the descent had a short abseil and then was very loose unprotected zig zagging snow and was time consuming. We didn't look but this cost us time. Loz made short work of the cruz/poorly protected start slabs on the final, 5th pinnacle. 3 more pitches I think and we finally got to the shoulder and summit at just after 5pm!
We were both unsure as to where the time had gone as the dark quickly ebbed in. We had a quick snack looking at the twinkling lights of Portree, I messaged Abi/Gemma to let them know we would be really late and we (well I certainly did) gathered our thoughts for the descent.
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| Looking to the sea cliffs we climbed on earlier in the year near Elgol |
The issue with the Cuillin is its so jagged that most/all of the peaks don't really have a path on the top, it's usually scrambling. There are 2 main ways down from the top, a scramble and then very long path out, which Loz had discounted as we didn't know the route and it was potentially longer, or the West ridge which then led to the col between Sgurr nan Gillean and Am Basteir. After this it was a walk/path that rejoined our route in. This did make sense.... but... the West Ridge is a grade 2 winter route and there wasn't much of a description of it.
I didn't even look into this before hand (bad Simon) but assumed it would be easy. Lets just say that it was very sobering turning on the head torches and setting off through a window (hole in the rocks) in the dark down a wintery grade 2 ridge which you have no knowledge of!
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| Third pinnacle I think! |
It started okay, then we dropped just below the ridge on one side and had to make a very insecure and dangerous traverse on snowed up frozen gravel - very dodgy! After this we stuck to the ridge and it quickly got spicy.
He ended up crossing some small pinnacles. They were only maybe 2m high with shear drops on both sides, but quite insecure so we had to make a couple of miniature abseils which was time consuming.
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| Looking back from the 4th Pinnacle to the 3rd and the awkward abseil line |
Eventually Loz ended up in a notch as the way ahead was barred by a pinnacle which overhung beyond it. We took a calculated decision to abseil down from this notch to the ledges we could see but not knowing if these bypassed the overhanging pinnacle. I think this was the lowest point, it was pretty mentally taxing not knowing when this would work out and get better! At some point Loz said 'I bet you wished we'd hit that deer, don't you!' Ha!
Thankfully this was the right way and from the bottom of the ab we could bypass the Pinnacle and we were finally on easy ground again. On Sunday I found out that the chimney we abseiled was Tooth Chimney (all correct) and this all made sense.. but at the time it was a different story.
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| On top of the 4th Pinnacle |
Finally we got to the col at about 8pm. Relief was palpable. There were footprints from people who had been up and down Am Basteir so after a snack we started the walk out getting to the van at 10:30pm feeling physically broken! Van to van we were out for 15.5 hours.
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| The top! Dark comes.. |
What a day. It's hard to sum it up in many ways. It was both physically and mentally tough, for me mainly from not knowing the terrain/mountain and what to expect. I learnt a lot from the day. When I finally got home and went to bed at 2am I literally just took off my salopettes and soft shell jacket and got in with everything else still on having set the alarm for 7am for work!
