Another early start! Which was put on hold because there was a nice neat little sign up on the kitchen door saying that it was closed till 7. I guess it might have something to do with the burning sausage/smoke alarm incident from the morning before either way it meant that we’ll have a little more time in bed each day. In the end Andy read for an hour and I slept on the couch in the reception till someone came to open up the kitchen. Our plan to go to Creag Meghi was put on hold and we plumed for Coire an Lochain instead.
The walk in to Lochain is pretty easy, but just long and tiring. The snow was just deep enough to be really annoying and occasionally my foot would go through into a gap between the boulders beneath. Times like this were very annoying. With the fog and the mist down a little we had the map out and the guidebook so we wouldn’t miss the low ridge you need to walk up to reach buttresses 1 & 2. We were aiming for buttress no.2 and the climb called Andromeda (grade IV, 4). 
Crossing the rim of the” great slab” was an awesome experience, especially since the snow was frozen on the top so you’d go for one hell of a slide if you slipped and could break. It’s no wonder there is a massive avalanche here each year. My first impressions of Lochain were of an oppressive amphitheatre as it was currently visible through the mist. Massive towering buttresses that encircled you on three sides with tops that vansished. I’ll admit that I was a little scared. Added to all this it was thawing, a little. The temperature was about 2/3 degrees but it was enough to get us acting a little more cautiously. 
Andromeda then! Andy took the first pitch with follows the line of Milky Way (III) till you belay beneath the groove/chimney of Andromeda. Andy set off up some not so great snow and ice while I stood and belayed of one crummy peg. Andy climbed on and on till hew as about20 metres out and then excavated a tonne of snow before decided to lower off a piece of gear. I didn’t understand but dutifully lowered Andy off anyway. About 4 metres above me the gear suddenly pulled out sending Andy crashing onto the great slab below. He then started to slide down the slab with some pace. My first though was that the peg was not going to hold so I let go of the belay device and grabbed the rope to slow him down and try and ease the force onto the peg. I could just see us both getting pulled off. Andy at the same time breaked with his axe and stopped. This was a little more than I’d had in mind for a simple day out climbing. 
Uninjured apart from the a cut on his cheek from his axe (which has left a cracking bruise) he plodded back up to me and we swapped the lead. A mire slip would not defeat us! I lead off taking it very easy up the ice as it was rather bad until I actually found a decent belay. I think Andy’s final words to me were “bomber belay and ropes tight as an Iron bar” as he was a little shaken. I did just that.Behind us now loomed the chimney of Andromeda and Christ did it look hard. Andy offered me the lead again and off I set. I managed to get up under the wrong groove in my initial attempt because I could see an opportunity for some protection but after placing it I knew I’d have a hard time actually gaining the chimney proper. I set about hunting around for the best of the bad ice at in the back and eventually found some meaning I could pull into it. Now all I could do was go up making us of the best of the bad ice as I went. I kept thinking that this would have been awesome under a complete freeze and a damn site easier! I ended up running it out a little as finding protection was hard and it just made more sense to keep moving. I was so scared.
At the crux, a small bulge in the ice I almost lost it. I was now run out in a defrosting chimney with no gear. In panic I hacked at the snow and ice accidentally revealing a hidden crack behind it.The little needle went out of the red and I placed a nut and committed to the crux. Needless to say I managed it and then it was easy snow and much better ice up the belay. After clipping my hex and run I could relax.Andy didn’t seem to have any problems with that pitch but he wasn’t up for leading anything now so I headed off on what I assumed was the last pitch. It was just simple snow but I had to down climb a little to regain the route. This little down climb proved to be the cause some major problems later on in the day. As I plodded up the snow I then saw the cornice about a metre high and half a metre thick. My heart sank, I had thought the difficulties were over. I set to work digging through the cornice which is slow, hard and wet work. All in all I was soaked though by the time I punched my axe through the roof, bringing it down on myself. I set about climbing up and out of it which was the single most scary bit of climbing I’ve even done. If I’d slipped that was have been it because I have not gear other than the belay. I topped out shacking.
I sort of hoped that there was someone on the top just to watch me climb out triumphantly but alas I was greeted by a cold windy, barren plateaux. No was the start of the final difficulty of the day. Remember the little down climb that I’d done, well now with Andy unable to hear me or me him, and the ropes pulling him in the wrong direction caught behind a load of ice and rock he couldn’t actually get up the last pitch. I was up on the plateaux for over an hour (I think) freezing cold and worrying about what had happened to him. He’d tried everything he could think of including trying to prussic up the rope, but he only had one prussic with him! Eventually with me laying on my stomach and leaning over the cornice (tied on of course) I could hear a few words on the wind from Andy. The word sounded a lot like “injured”.My first thought was to call mountain rescue then I decided to find out what the problem was. I’m just a little against calling them out when we could get out of whatever it was ourselves. Instead I yelled to see if he was safe, eventually I got a call of “safe” back up. Now I set about digging and massive snow bollard to abseil back down to Andy on. Once I’d constructed something that you could have parked a car on and enlisted the ice axes of a hapless walker wondering around the plateaux to back it up, off I went. In truth I only abseiled the first 5 metres or so and the rest I kind of down climbed to eventually arrive at Andy.
Apparently the call of “injured” was actually him calling “negative” through the wind because he thought I wouldn’t make out the word “no”. As I’ve explained he could actually climb up anyway and by now it was starting to get dark we abseiled off, leaving behind a hex and nut. The ropes made it all the way to the ground in one 60 metre abseil meaning we could just coil them and get back to our bags.
By now it was getting pretty dark so we just packed up as quickly as we could and set off on the walk back. The mist and fog kept threatening to close in but by this point we’d actually found our foot prints from the walk in and we followed them back (mostly) until arriving at Coire cas, to drive home.
Considering the day we had it was over all quite serious what with Andy falling off, me abseiling off a snow bollard off the Cairngorm plateau and walking out in the dark. Coire an Lochain is an awesome place to climb and I can’t wait to get back there and see what else it’s got to offer! Maybe some walkie-talkies wouldn’t go a miss though…
No comments:
Post a Comment