11th March 2023, Coire Nan Fhamhair, Beinn Bhan The Godfather has some of the richest history of all modern winter climbs in Scotland. All these legends were swirling around up there when Rob and I dared to finally give it a try last winter, and so to set the scene I’d like to re-tell some …
8th March 2023, Am Basteir We’ve reached the penultimate route of last winter now, which occurred on another one of those “best day of the winter” days. This being on Wednesday, I secured yet another last minute day off from my long-suffering manager and plans were set in motion! Iain and I headed over from …
5th March 2023, Carn Etchachan: I wanted to put this short post up to rave about the quality of a little-known route called Rumplestilskin on the Carn Etchachan upper tier, which Rob and I headed up to one Sunday. It was Rob’s 10th successive day out winter climbing, on a run which we’d started on …
16th December 2022, Mainreachan buttress on Fuar Tholl Fuar Tholl hosts a couple of the mythical big crags in the North West which I'd read about in the guidebook for years, but the opportunity to go there had never quite materialised. Towards the end of the long and very cold spell of weather in December, …
26th February 2023, Carn Etchachan Some photos from one of the best days of the winter, when Tim and I headed over to Carn Etchachan and climbed Nathrach Dubh (aka. Black Snake). Walking over the tops was pretty special as we watched cloud pour into the Loch Avon basin. I would say that I've become …
24th February 2023, Coire an Lochain Warning: what follows is just a move-by-move account of an awesome route, but it was an intense experience for me, and probably the hardest winter pitch I’ve done or will ever do! I owe Will a lot for encouraging Rob and I to get on something like this, as …
20th January 2023, Buachaille Etive Mor 7AM: Alarms blare in unison throughout the Caol climbing commune. Three fried eggs and we’re off. 8:45AM: The i20 rolls into the layby and we walk out, it’s a perfect winter day. The path is frozen into an icy runway promising perfect conditions on the hill, it looks like …
4th March 2022, Orion Face, Ben Nevis For me personally, much of the best writing about climbing isn't really about the climbing at all. The raw facts of an ascent, especially if nothing major went wrong, don't usually form a good narrative! Other modalities like video and images fare a bit better, since they're inherently …
13th February 2022, Number 1 buttress, Coire an Lochan Rob and I wandered in to lochan for an easy day, and stumbled out well after dark after ventricle. A post of few words and many pictures: Great view of most of the route from number 2 buttress. I'm just getting stuck into the crux move …
11th February 2022, Lost Valley Buttress In January I managed to switch my work down to a four day week. I really enjoy my job most of the time but there's probably nothing which I want to spend 40 hours, 5 days a week doing year-round. I see it getting more and more common in …
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