Walking in a warm affair!
Johnny in his bucket seat and snow bollard belay at the bottom of Broad Gully.
A two point rock belay and equalised up to a single tie in point.
Today, I was working for a friend who runs 'Adventure First', based in Aberdeen. Lizzie, Phil and Johnny came through to the west coast to spend a day looking at the techniques required to ascend steeper terrain and enter the realms of climbing in winter. We headed for Corie nan Lochan as we needed to get into the snow pack and height is required right now as the snow line has receded so far up to approx 800m. The thaw is wiping allot of the low ice lines out and the higher buttresses are black! A few folk were out climbing Dorsal Arete and Boomerang Gully. One party were on Dorsal direct start, but it looked very wet and not particularly wintry. Some ice hangs in there but we need a drop in temperature very quickly and it looks like it may come just on time! If the cold conditions come back the snow will be fantastic to climb on.
We spent a great day work-shopping, building a variety of snow and rock belays and testing to destruction our snow belays! A fun day and the guy's are heading out tomorrow to look for steep ground to put it all into practice.
