A day out on Creag Meagaidh

UPDATE: I've added a video of Nick on the summit of Meggy, below

When I started this blog I promised to update my Fundraising Page, every now and then, with a new Embarassing Photo from my past. Well, I've posted up a new one.
Here's the story of how I came by the frosty eyebrows and the Thousand Yard Stare.

It starts in a curry restaurant in Fort William, a town on the West coast of Scotland, on the evening of 1st March 2010. My friend Nick and I were halfway through a winter climbing trip. Earlier that day, in glorious sunshine, we'd climbed Buachaille Etive Mòr, a mountain overlooking the vast Rannoch Moor and which stands at the head of Glen Coe. From its top, the crystal clear air gave us views of snow-covered mountains for tens of miles all around.

True blue. Little did we know what the following day had in store

In the restaurant that evening, over an extremely rich curry and a pint or two of lager we hatched a plan to do another climb the next day. Our objective was Creag Meagaidh ("Meggy"), a complex mountain on the northern side of Glen Spean, which takes the form of a flat summit plateau at 3,710ft from which five ridges radiate. Our target was Smith's Gully, a prosaically-named route up the cliffs forming its north-eastern face.

As we left Fort William at 0600 next morning, low cloud cover was signalling a return to normal Scottish weather service after the sunshine of the previous few days. The forecast had been reasonably good though, so we had no inkling of what lay in store for us.

Dreich

It's quite a long walk up to the base of the mountain, of just over 2 hours. We soon found out that rich curry doesn't provide good fuel for an uphill slog carrying heavy packs: we were sluggish for the first hour and a half up the path. But slowly we got in our stride as the huge Meggy crags loomed up out of the mist and cloud.

As we were putting on our harnesses and sort outing our climbing gear in the shelter of some boulders, another climbing team passed us, heading toward  the base of Smith's Gully. We threw our gear on and set off in pursuit, overtaking the pair. They confirmed they'd been intent on the same climb, but after we explained our objective they decided to do another route rather than follow us and so risk being hit by ice dislodged by our axes.

Standing at the base of the climb, it felt more serious and committing than anything we'd done on the trip so far. At grade V(5), Smith's Gully is one of the harder Scottish gully routes and now, the wind, cloud and spindrift snow blowing in our faces added to the intimidating atmosphere in this remote and wild place. 

But once we'd started, we found the climbing continuously varied and interesting, and relatively easy for the grade with a decent snow/ice buildup. The climb continued for 3 long rope pitches: I led the 2nd, eventually belaying with ice screws at the very end of the 60m ropes. The 3rd pitch was supposedly the most difficult section of the climb but because of the good ice conditions it felt pretty straightforward.

As we arrived at the mountain top, very pleased with ourselves, the wind was still building, and buffeting snow into our faces.

meggy from Jim on Vimeo.


We were in thick snow cloud - a complete "whiteout", visibility down to a few metres and worsening. After we'd packed our gear Nick sat down with map and compass to take a bearing. Then we set off to find our way off the mountain, Nick was in the lead and me close behind. I could only just make him out, from just a couple of metres ahead.

Taking a bearing

After fifteen minutes of plodding through the increasing murk and driving snow,  Nick suddenly disappeared with a yelp. He'd fallen through a cornice - a self-supporting shelf of snow formed over a cliff edge by the wind, the edge of which had been completely invisible to us. Luckily he fell only a few metres, landing on an easy snow slope and coming to a halt. It could have been a lot worse. He climbed back up, shaken. After sitting down for a moment to collect himself, we moved back 50 metres from the cliff edge, before turning again to follow our original compass bearing.

A couple of hours later we were back in the car, heading back to Fort William and the pub.

Lesson 1. Take a more detailed map than a 1:50,000 if there are cliffs about and there's a chance of bad weather 

Lesson 2. Treat forecasts in Scotland with a pinch of salt 

Lesson 3: Give yourself LOTS of leeway from a cliff-edge in a white-out
Lesson 4: A rich curry does not make for good climbing fuel...