The day started off well… I got 10 minutes extra in bed simply because my alarm didn’t go off. Seems that it was a good job I actually looked at my phone to see what the time was. Breakfast however was a little bit of a disaster. It seems that this YHA doesn’t like me cooking breakfast in the morning (last year the gas was turned off on the first morning…). Basically I managed to set the smoke alarm off at just past 6am. Not a great start.
With all the kit packed the night before we managed to make a quick (ish) get-away from the hostel and get to the coire na ciste car park nice and early, in appauling conditions. The car was rocking the wind was so strong and you could see that the visibility was going to be a real problem. I think both me and Andy considered going back to bed and sacking it off but people hope (unlike horses) and I at least figured that I’d driven all the way to Scotland, so weather or no weather we were going to get some climbing done (note: Andy probably didn’t even consider not climbing). Out in hoolie we trekked.
The walk in itself was long, much longer than I remembered but less tiring. We were walking into the wind but I was using some walking poles. My knees have been playing up on long days out in winter with a heavier pack than normal and it’s time I started looking after them. Admittedly have less of a strain on the legs meant that my arms took some of the work and I felt it.
Arriving at the gearing up point, in a near white out we decided on The Runnel however finding it proved more of a problem than we first thought. I’ll admit that I sent us off in the wrong direction in the beginning which due to excellent white out conditions saw us climbing up snow, neve and ice slopes to top out on the Cairngorm plateau. It was my mistake and we quickly descended by the route we’d come as the wind was gusting close to 60mph. As we were descending the same line as we’d just come up we opted for some bum-sliding to speed things up a little. This is where I committed my seconded mistake of the day… not removing my crampons. I managed to lose control of my slide as I hit the 50 degree ice slopes and clip a crampon spinning me round. I slide all in all about 100 metres before I managed to spin and ice axes arrest, shaking. As I’m writing this the pain in my knee and ankle act as a reminder of my stupidity.
I don’t think that I made any other stupid mistakes on this day, instead I descended a lot more carefully and taking advantage of the a break in the weather spied a buttress over to the right and we headed for it. Standing in knee/waist deep snow at the base of several choice looking gullies, blankly staring at the guidebook because we had no idea where we were, Andy just suggested that we climb up the best looking gully. As we geared up a local guide and partner met us as they did the adjacent route and informed us that it was Red Gully (III, 4), pretty much the sort of thing we were after.
I took the first pitch which started with a powder snow plod so bad that I seriously considered that; one I would be able to get up the snow and two; was it worth it. Staring up between the breaks of the spindrift avalanches that continually snowed down on us I figure it was. The route did look pretty awesome. The next 50 metres we great mixed climbing, with just enough gear. There was several icey steps to surmount, not all the time with my axes (one I chimneyed up with my arms). The route was done in proper Scottish winter conditions, with heavy spindrift avalanches piling down every few minutes. I actually found a pretty bomber belay after cleaning powder and hoar frost from a crack and gave the magical three tugs to signal I was safe.
Andy arrived after yelling for a tight rope. I yelled “why?” and got the ominous answer of “ I’ll show you in a minutes”. Needless to say he had a more than adequate reason… a bolt had worked itself loose and one of the picks of his axe flopped around like a wounded animal. It was agreed I would lead the next pitch which turned out to me a 60m neve gully. I didn’t bother with any gear because I was so cold and just concentrated on moving quickly and staying warm. I tugged the full 60metres as I tried to top out and sat on the rim in a bucket seat (which froze my arse) and back up buried ice axe. Andy got waist belay treatment.
The weather on the Cairngorm Plateaux hadn’t exactly got any better and we opted to descend by the route we already descended once already that day. I was much more careful this time and we actually found the mountain rescue box at the base as conditions finally started to improve! The cloud lifted a little and the wind dropped so we de-kitted and walked out with clear skys. Not bad for our first day.
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