Winter: Continued
After Christmas I returned to Scotland. Myself and Hannah spent New Years on Beinn a’Bhuird climbing the esoteric Slugain Buttress with friends Ed and Madeline. A few minor forays followed, including a fun day on the Ben with Jim and Pat, two Sheffield climbers I’d been introduced to by Will Rupp. I took a rather large, and totally unexpected, fall on Hobgoblin when a chossy hook ripped - not showing them how it’s done.
Maybe the unexpected fall was some kind of omen, because the next week I hit a flooded section of road on the A82 late at night and rolled my car. I was fortunatly alright, but the car was not. This came at a really bad time. I won’t lie, starting a business like Shelterstone is not an immediatly profitable enteprise, and I felt very down on my luck knowing I would struggle to buy another car, even with the insurance pay out. It is against the backdrop of this that one of the most memorable weeks of my winter climbing this year was played out.
Iain turned up at the house with plans to climb with Rob and myself. I honestly had not given an objective any thought and had mostly been stressing about the car. They mentioned Citadel on the Shelterstone, we packed our bags and set an early alarm. It was only walking into Sneachda the next day at 4am that it really sunk in - this was going to be a pretty big route. I remember reading the UKC logs and almost every team talking about a savage benightment, including Misha actually writing a poem about how benighted they got. Needless to say, I was not optimistic about finishing any time before about midnight.
Iain kicked off up the start of the route in the dark, leading the first easier (but not piss) block efficiently up to the lower crux. A steep cracked wall leading to a slab, Iain hooked and torqued his way up really quickly (maybe he was thinking about Mishas poem) and soon it was my turn.
I did not feel great. Nothing had felt great recently. Climbing had felt hard and scary, the crash had shaken me up, and I realistically had not gotten over my leg breaking fall the year before. And off I went, up an easier IV pitch to the base of the Upper Crux. The Upper Crux climbed a small pinnacle, traversed a slab, and climbed around easier looking ground out of sight. As soon as I pulled onto the pinnacle I immediatly felt tense and scared. But as with all winter climbing, a hook here and a runner there tempted me up, tempted me over the pinnacle, across the slab, and mantled onto a small platform looking at the easier ground. I shouted down that the next section looked a lot easier. Iain and Rob then heard around an hour of power screaming. It was not easier. Insecure, rounded cracks with smeary feet, steep walls, all covered in useless powder. Rather than being pushed into the background, the progressive stress and anxiety of the past week became louder and louder. I have never experienced my body screaming at me so hard to stop doing something, but you can’t just abandon a pitch half way when you’re on top of the Shelterstone. So up I went, all the way to the belay. And suddenly the screams stopped. It was still light and we were one pitch below the top.
Iain and Rob seconded and I handed the rack to Rob for the final pitch. If theres anyone to hand the rack to in this situation it’s Rob, and after an hour of insecure excavation he had taken our ropes to the top of the crag. Topping out was an incredible feeling, and we walked back over the plateau in our own little pools of light. We made it home for midnight - not a result I had expected.
So that was one big tick off the agenda. But the warm front that tends to follow cold stormy weather did not materialise. In fact, it got colder and snowier. The North West became the target and after some changed plans we piled into Rob’s van and made for Assynt.
Six years before myself and Iain had climbed Direct Nose Route in a scorching summers day. It was my first time in the North West, after my first year in Scotland and my first year climbing. As a teenager from Cambridge with no previous connection to this (often less-than) vertical world, I was blown away.
The vast landscape looked significantly snowier six years on. And with less sunshine. Actually, no sunshine. We walked across featureless bog on a bearing for two hours until the Nose showed it’s face out of the mirk. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. So Iain started us off and lead the first three pitches. The higher we climbed on the nose, the more atmospheric the weather. Spindrift raked the face as I racked up and started the traverse. After The Citadel, I was glad for a totally piss pitch of basically walking along a ledge, and then climbed a more technical pitch up a series of corners until we decided it was Rob’s turn. The weather had really come in now but that didn’t stop him and we made it to below the crux cracked wall. Rob climbed through the dying light and before darkness had set in, he stood on top of the hard climbing. The top of the nose actually continues a suprisingly long way and we simuled a few pitches until we emerged at the summit cairn. This one did mean a lot to me. The fact that six years before I’d stood here just when I had started climbing, and that all three of us had returned six years on to climb it in winter was, I thought, quite an amazing thing.
Down the gully, reversing a days climbing in fifteen minutes back to our bags and in for the long slog back. The next day we climbed Positive Vegetation, a random IV on Stac Pollaidh before returning to Inverness.
Citadel and Direct Nose Route are without a doubt two of the best winter routes I have ever climbed, bringing together everything that makes Scottish winter so good. I can’t help but think that in future seasons I’ll be hard pressed to beat these two routes in a week.