Rime and Punishment

Paul Seabrook leading the second pitch of Central Crack Route, Coire an Lochain. The ice is too thin to climb; torqued picks in the cracks are the key. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Our route was No. 4 of the five types of Scottish winter climbing outlined during a slide show on the opening night of the meet by Simon Richardson, a leading Scottish pioneer who is also one of the most active climbers in the Coast Ranges of British Columbia, despite living 5,000 miles away. The five are: 1) Gullies; 2) Thin snow-ice-plastered faces; 3) Steep ice falls; 4) Snowed-up rock climbs; and 5) True mixed climbs, with bits of ice, torquing in rock cracks, and, especially, frozen turf. The strict Scottish ethic requires rock climbs to be covered with snow or hoar frost before they can be climbed with ice axes and crampons. (“If you're caught climbing bare rock with your ice axes, you’ll be sent home,” a meet official joked.) Problem is, most of the routes were bare, and climbers had traveled from halfway around the world (or maybe from London) to climb. The rules seemed to be bent in the Northern Corries this day, and not just by the international guests.

 The third pitch, my lead again, traversed steep snow to an ominous cornice. A party had busted through this before us, so the path was obvious, but when I started moving onto the steep snow rib beneath the lip, my footholds collapsed and I lurched sideways. The snow was too soft for picks, too wet to hold the shafts of the tools. Eventually I discovered I could punch my gloved fists straight into the snow, giving enough support to oonch sideways onto the snow rib, reach over the lip, and belly-flop onto the flat summit.

Sitting in the snow, with no anchor possible, I belayed Paul and looked around. The Cairngorm corries were cut by glaciers from an enormous ancient plateau, an utterly anticlimactic summit. We had been climbing in the lee of the wind, but now it punched my back. I could see blue sky through the mist perhaps 100 yards overhead, but clag hugged the plateau, reducing visibility to about a rope length. The voices emerging from the fog carried infinitely varied British accents and half a dozen foreign tongues: Hebrew, Greek, Lithuanian, German, Italian, and Chinese.

Down into the clag we walked, keeping well right of cairns that marked the cornice-loaded lip of the coire. We were soaking wet, the sodden rope weighed down my pack, but we had climbed a memorable route. Amazing what you can do if you just get out of the car.

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Part II

Day Two of the International Winter Meet in Scotland dawned drearier than the first day, if that’s possible.

At the Cairngorms ski area, raindrops splattered the windshield of the car. Once again, I was astonished by the tenacity of the skiers buckling up their boots and trudging through the rain toward the slush-filled gullies and parallel rows of snow fences that were the only features of the mountain still holding “snow.” The rest of the white stuff had been stripped bare by warm winds. Rumor had it that a busload of Japanese skiers had unloaded the day before for a Scottish skiing holiday, which should cause some Japanese travel agent to be fired. I had commented to Lindsay Griffin, the longtime British chronicler of alpine ascents worldwide, about the amazing persistence of the Brits in venturing out in foul weather.

“We’re a pathetic nation,” was his response.

Actually, I found it inspiring. We loaded our packs and trudged through the rain toward Coire an t’Sneachda, and once again we were rewarded. The rain stopped half a mile above the car, and, though the clouds never lifted, there was no wind and no excuse not to climb.

The ice conditions were still poor, however, and the 45 climbers at the international meet, along with their British hosts, were adjusting their sights. After Simon Richardson’s slide show introducing Scottish winter climbing on the first night of the meet, one climber had muttered, “Nice of him to show us pictures of climbs that only come in once every 10 years.” The next day, climbers had backed off the steeper routes in Coire an Lochain, driven down by wet rock and falling chunks of ice. Canadian Sean Isaac never left the snow at the base, as his partner bailed from 40 feet up the first pitch of a Grade VI route, demoralized by the sight of the great Richardson sketching just above him, also about to bail.

So, today, most people chose easier routes that could be climbed safely in rotten conditions. A few headed to Ben Nevis, about an hour and a half’s drive away, in hopes of finding climbable ice on the upper reaches of Scotland’s highest peak. (New Hampsherite Freddie Wilkinson, one of America’s strongest young alpinists, returned that night beaming that he had done a route, the Northeast Buttress of Ben Nevis, that was first climbed in 1896.) My host, Paul Seabrook, suggested Fingers Ridge in Coire an t’Sneachda, and it proved to be a good call. A snow-dappled slab gained a rock ridge. Bits of snow, occasional soggy ice, lots of rock climbed in tools and crampons—all culminating on the fourth pitch with a series of short rock towers that we weaved around and climbed over.

Paul Seabrook wrings out his gloves before the third pitch. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Good stuff, but I wondered about the effectiveness of the Scottish ethic for protecting the rock. The big holds on Fingers Ridge were worn and bright-colored by winter traffic; the light covering of snow and hoar frost wasn’t protecting them from tools and crampons. The frost didn’t necessarily even make climbs harder: It outlined the edges on blank-looking walls, making them easier to find. So what was the point?

Back at Glenmore Lodge for afternoon tea and cakes, I tried to get an explanation out of James Edwards, a teacher who lives near Inverness, and Steve Ashworth, a young guy from England's Lakes District who is pushing the limits of winter climbing in Britain. The two argued that, although the ethic is ineffective at preventing rock damage, it is nonetheless essential. In part it preserves “turf,” the clumps of frozen dirt, moss, and other vegetation that provide critical tool and front-point placements, and even protection points with Specters or Warthogs driven into the stuff. Many climbs have gotten harder as the turf erodes away, which happens much faster when the turf isn’t frozen. Scotland’s strict ethics (which also include no bolts and only doing ground-up, onsight ascents), along with long approaches and stormy weather, have held down standards; the hardest Scottish climbs are nowhere near as difficult technically as sport-mixed routes elsewhere. But that seems fine with most Brits. Ian Parnell said, “ The cliffs are often so short that ground-up climbs are the best way to preserve the adventure.” Said Ashworth: “It’s all about giving the cliff a chance.”

The forecast called for a cold snap on Day Three. It seemed the cliffs would have their chance.

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Starting the walk up to Ben Nevis. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Part III

With a good forecast for Day Three of the International Winter Meet in Scotland, more than half of the climbers at the Glenmore Lodge laid plans to climb at Ben Nevis, the highest summit in the British Isles at 4,406 feet.

The Ben is hallowed ground for Scottish winter climbers, with a history of technical climbing that dates to the 19th century and new testpieces still established almost every season. The mountain lay about an hour and a half's drive from the lodge, and so, well before dawn, we filled two 15-seater vans and a small fleet of private cars and headed west.

Clouds covered the peak when we arrived at the parking lot, but we could see fresh snow not far above us, and streaks of white ice appeared to flow out of the clouds and down the black buttresses and gullies: a welcome sight after two days of rainy, warm climbing. Better still, the air was calm. A herd of amped-up climbers raced up the trail.

Des Rubens heads into Observatory Gully: Still about 1,000 vertical feet to the base of the Indicator Wall. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Ben Nevis' steep northeastern side is nearly two miles wide and rises as much as 1,600 vertical feet, but those impressive numbers don't give the full picture. The wall is a complex maze of buttresses, gullies, and smaller faces that have yielded hundreds of individual routes. Moreover, with numerous routes starting higher the summit elevations of most Scottish peaks, the Ben has an extraordinarily long winter season for a low-elevation mountain, with some routes climbable until June. Long snow gullies allow easy access to various elevations — our route would start just 500 feet below the summit, after an approach of several hours. That's a lot of hiking for only three or four pitches of ice, but climbers who love Ben Nevis value the overall experience as much as the individual technical leads — a day on the Ben is very much an Alpine outing.

The climbers in the center are starting up Smiths Route, a Grade V that Robin Smith led in 1960 with a single ice axe, chopping hundreds of steps up two pitches of very steep ice. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Although ice conditions on the upper mountain are usually very good, the weather is generally bad. Climbers carry compasses and laminated plastic cards showing the bearings for navigating off the cliff-lined summit plateau in a whiteout. Most veterans have a story or two of epic wind events. The best I heard at the Winter Meet was from a British climber whose name I didn't catch: He had topped out somewhere near Observatory Ridge in huge winds and whiteout, and he started crawling with his partner toward the summit, 500 feet away, with 15 feet of rope tied between them. Suddenly his partner vanished — he had broken through the cornice above Point Five Gully. The fellow at the meet said, “In all the blowing snow, I didn't even know where he was: I could see he'd fallen, but there was no weight on the rope. And then he was blown back onto the top by the updraft from the gully. I reeled him in like a fish.” It's possible I was being reeled in by this story, but every Brit at the meet seemed to have a similarly desperate tale from the Ben, so who knows?

I was climbing this day with Des Rubens, an outdoor-education teacher from Edinburgh who had climbed for decades in Scotland, as well as on expeditions around the world. When we reached the Scottish Mountaineering Club hut at the main face, Des pondered the crowds of climbers streaming up the gullies and said, “Och, we may have to wait, but I think we'll have the best luck in Observatory Gully.” And so we cramponed up firm Styrofoam snow toward the icy Indicator Wall, where queues of climbers stood below every climb. We perched atop a tiny bergschrund below Psychedelic Wall (VI, 5) to wait our turn.

Psychedelic was climbed in 1978, and the classic thin-ice face route was quite feared back in the day, hence the respectably high overall grade of VI. Modern gear and good conditions had dimmed the aura of the climbs on this wall, but not the excellence. In the condition we found it, the Psychedelic Wall equated roughly to easy WI 4. But the route, especially the second pitch, was still quite serious. The ice was never more than about six inches thick, and much of the climbing depended upon sheets of sticky névé — wind-plastered wet snow that sucked up picks and crampons points. On the second pitch, the ice and névé thinned to about an inch for a delicate 25-foot rising traverse with no protection. But the angle was such that you could balance on your feet, and Des led it comfortably.

Leading the steeper third pitch, I weaved through bulges of ice with good pro-wonderful climbing — and then engaged in my second cornice battle of the week, as I stupidly skipped an obvious stance and tried to run it out to the top. We were carrying Des' 50-meter rope and my 60, and his cord came tight just as I planted my axes over the lip off the small cornice and tried to lift my knee onto the top. I tugged at the ropes and yelled for Des to untie his short rope, but he couldn't hear me. As I was pondering the delicate downclimb to the last stance, two climbers who had finished the climb just ahead of us — Maciej Ciesielski from Poland and his British host Stan Halstead — asked if they could help. I pulled up the slack in my 60-meter rope and tossed an end to them, then handed them my axes so they could bury the tools for a quick anchor. I belayed with my feet on the lip of the cornice until Des moved up enough for me to scurry back out of harm's way.

On top, Des marveled at the view, saying he'd rarely seen it so calm and clear. Although the sky was overcast, we could see beneath the clouds to the mountain ridges on the islands of Skye, Rhum, and Mull. The afternoon sun glinted pale yellow off the sea. Des turned slowly and named prominent peaks 'round the points of the compass. “Aye, take it all in,” he said, “because you won't get many days like this up here.”

Nor anywhere else, either.

Alisdair Buchanan downclimbs through the cornice to Tower 4 Gully, a steep way back to the hut at the base of the face. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Category 5 avalanche danger: Not a good day to be out on the hill. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Part IV

I slept late on Day Four of the International Winter Meet in Scotland, waking as an intercom blared that the daily briefing would begin at 8:45, in just a few minutes.

The British Mountaineering Council’s Nick Colton didn’t have much to announce: There was a blizzard outside, avalanche conditions had jumped overnight to Category 5, the highest level, and, anyway, most climbers were too tired to contemplate another day on the hill after three days of long approaches and cold climbing. I was knackered, and other guests had done much harder days than I had. Canadian Sean Isaac and host Simon Richardson rode mountain bikes along a forest road for an hour or so, then hiked five hours to a remote crag, all to do a three-pitch new route. “That was a ridiculous amount of effort for three pitches,” Isaac said that night. “But they were damned good pitches!”

This morning, only two parties were headed up the hill, including the irrepressible Richardson, who was gearing up in the hall outside the lodge’s large and amazingly effective drying room with a bemused-looking Kristoffer Szilas from Denmark. The Dane had done a hard route on the Ben the day before (making the probable third ascent of the Grade VII Babylon with Ian Parnell, followed immediately by Americans John Varco and Freddie Wilkinson for the fourth ascent). Now, Szilas seemed to be wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

Nick Colton on his first dry-tooling route, a short D4 at the Newtyle slate quarry near Birnham, Scotland. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

Not a few climbers were nursing hangovers from the vicious schnapps brewed by the grandmother of Slovenian Rok Zalokar (who did a very hard new route on the 7,000-meter-plus Janak Chuli with Andrej Stremfelj last year). I’d managed to avoid the schnapps but not the draft ales poured in the upstairs bar of the Glenmore Lodge, and now I was happy just to set up at a table in the dining room for a day of noodling at my computer and chatting with climbers from around the world.

Sangzhu, a Tibetan-born resident of Beijing, experiments with dry-tooling: Could this be the next big thing in China? Photo by Dougald MacDonald

In three days of climbing, I’d already shared belays with Luca Maspes from Italy, Maciej Ciesielski from Poland, Fidde Jönsson from Sweden, Jo Dotremont from Belgium, and Nitzan Auerbach from Israel, not to mention hanging out with various British hosts and my American roommates Varco and Wilkinson. In the dining room and during long, stinky van rides, there were extraordinary opportunities to share stories and half-understood jokes. (English of various degrees of fluency was the common language.) The sun poked out that afternoon, but we could see clouds flying across the ridges and there were reports of natural avalanches in the Northern Corries above the lodge. Most climbers seemed happy to chill, but one van left for a tour of a nearby distillery, and another drove about an hour and a half to a small collection of dry-tooling routes at a slate quarry near Birnham.

The next day the weather was still poor and I was still feeling the fatigue in my legs, and so I opted to join a trio headed to the roadside Birnham quarry for a little experimenting with modern dry-tooling. Newtyle Quarry is as untraditional as they come, and had challenged Scottish ethics with its aid-bolted, drilled-pocket routes (pioneered by Dave Brown, Dave MacLeod, Scott Muir, and a few others). These routes were not mixed: Ice would rarely form at this low-elevation crag. They were just for practice or training or a new sport all their own.

Nick Colton works a D6 roof problem at Newtyle Quarry. Photo by Dougald MacDonald

I visited the quarry with Nick Colton, the deputy chief executive officer of the BMC, Steve Long, head of Mountain Leader Training UK, and Cirensangzhu (“Sangzhu”) from Tibet. We reached the wet, chossy crag in just a couple of minutes’ walk from the road. In addition to its dry-tooling routes, the crag had a couple of traditional lines and a handful of sport routes. “You know, this cliff has three different grading systems!” marveled Colton.

We all were more or less dry-tooling virgins, and so we started with the three easiest and lowest-angled dry-tooling routes, from D4 to D5+. The grades roughly correspond to mixed-climbing M-grades, but based on my limited mixed experience at Vail and other Colorado crags, they seemed slightly stiff—the routes we did felt like M5 to hard M6. (The short online guide to Newtyle suggests that D4 translates roughly to a Scottish technical grade of 6.) Even on the easiest routes, many of the holds and pick placements were manufactured. Up the hill was a deep, slanted cave whose roof was lined with rows of drilled holds and quickdraws. This was the Tube, home to Scott Muir’s Fast and Furious (D11), Dave MacLeod’s extension Too Fast Too Furious (D12), and MacLeod and Will Gadd’s Good Training for Something (D12+). It also held a 5.13d manufactured sport route that MacLeod had free-soloed, as well as an E7 traditional route that MacLeod also had free-soloed (because it has no pro).

As traditional-minded Britons, Colton and Long were highly skeptical of the small, muddy, manufactured crag when they arrived, but were willing to check it out, and they quickly found they enjoyed the technical and pumpy climbing. They even started speculating about where they might find similar abandoned quarries that might be equipped for dry-tooling near their homes in England or Wales. Sangzhu, who guides high-altitude climbs in the Himalaya and had trained as a guide in France, had never seen anything like this. He flailed a bit on the first route, but quickly got up to speed and flashed the hardest of the three lines we did, despite being handicapped with two frontpoints on each of his crampons, which made for sketchy footwork in the rock’s narrow toe slots.

I, too, found it compelling, and the lower-angled routes actually seemed like good practice for “real” climbing; the angle was something you might find in the mountains. (This statement belies my own inexperience: In fact, the limits of onsight, traditionally protected mixed climbing in Scotland are being pushed on vertical and overhanging routes, not on slabs.) I made good use of my leashless tools and took my first two leader falls in 25 years of wielding axes and crampons. No harm done.

The eye-opening quarry at Birnham might not be exactly what traditional Scottish climbers had in mind when they signed up to host the International Winter Meet. But the experience of climbing there was exactly the sort of exchange of ideas the meet was supposed to foster.

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Part V

In the bar at Glenmore Lodge, midway through the International Winter Meet, I overheard James Edwards talking with a tall guy named Roger Webb about finding a guest climber to explore the Northwest Highlands.

I raised my hand and said, “I’ll go.”

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but I knew the northwest was the least populated part of Scotland, and that its steep sandstone and quartzite mountains seldom saw climbers. Webb, a lawyer in Inverness, had spent years exploring these peaks and doing new routes, and, he said, “I saw more climbers today on a single route in the Northern Corries than I’ll see in an entire year in the Northwest Highlands.”

Mikael Bo Kristiansen dances on the pedals with a 35-pound pack on his back. Photos by Dougald MacDonald

At dinner the following night, Webb told me to pack up: I’d be going to his house for the night, along with his partner, Mikael Bo Kristiansen from Denmark; we’d pick up Edwards at his house on the way west. Before leaving, Edwards asked, cryptically, “You do know how to ride a bike, right?”

In the morning, well before dawn, we managed to load four packs full of winter gear into Webb’s small wagon, along with a disassembled bicycle; three more bikes were strapped to a rack on the back. “Keep a sharp eye out for deer,” Edwards told Mikael, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. “If you see one, yell loudly.”

“You’re being driven by a one-eyed man,” Webb explained—he had lost his right eye to stone fall on the North Face of the Eiger, many years earlier.

James Edwards and Roger Webb study the lines on Beinn Dearg. It looks promising, but the turf isn’t frozen. Photos by Dougald MacDonald

We made it across the country unscathed and parked by the head of Loch Broom at sea level. We unpacked the bikes, pushed them through a gate, and began riding up a muddy road toward the cloud-covered hills at the head of Gleann na Squaib. Rain squalls blew across the fields. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years, and with a 35-pound pack on my back, my quads soon were screaming. We climbed hundreds of feet above the valley, left the bikes at the end of the road, and then walked about an hour and a half along a trail that started muddy and eventually was covered with a shallow layer of snow. Our goal was Beinn Dearg, a broad ridge that topped out at about 3,400 feet above the car, with a steep escarpment that holds half a dozen routes; Edwards and Webb hoped a new line might be possible today.

Your correspondent starts the second lead of Tower of Babel (IV, 6), a fine four-pitch prow. Photo by James Edwards.

When we stood below the face, the two Brits somehow could discern that it wasn’t in condition, despite its healthy white coat. The crucial clumps of turf, they felt, would not be adequately frozen. So, we continued upward, turning around a prominent arête and into a gully, in hopes of finding colder turf and a climbable line higher up. Seeing nothing obvious, Webb and Kristiansen opted to repeat the four-pitch Tower of Babel (IV, 6), the nice-looking arête. I still hoped to try a new route, so Edwards and I backtracked to the right flank of the prow and eyed an unclimbed line that diagonaled up to the ridge. I took the lead and started up a shallow corner, but the turf, I quickly realized, was not all solid. The mossy clumps took thunker tool placements, but my picks and frontpoints ripped through the grassier patches. Worse, mud and grass balled up in my crampons, causing my feet to pop off alarmingly. At the top of the corner, a few rock moves made for a fun traverse, but soon I found myself plowing through a field of turf. The single nut I placed for pro after leaving the corner soon levered out. One-hundred feet up, I halted at a decent stance. Were conditions as awful as they seemed to be, or was this all part of the game? I needed an expert opinion, so I placed a meager anchor and brought Edwards up.

“This isn’t right,” he said. “We should go down.”

Easy ground on the last pitch of Tower of Babel. Photo by James Edwards.

We rappelled to the ground and returned to the Tower of Babel. Realizing we still had time to salvage the day if we moved quickly, we raced up four pitches to join our friends on top. The climbing was interesting and enjoyable (and, thankfully, didn’t depend on frozen turf), but even though the temperature hovered right around freezing I was seriously cold with three layers of clothing on my legs and five on top. I hadn’t seen clearly through my glasses in hours.

It was well after dark by the time we returned to the bikes. Now came the payoff for the hard ride up the hill: The day’s struggles were forgotten as we swooped down the forest road in the pale glow of our headlamps, rain splatting against our Gore-Tex, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

While we were off wandering in the wilderness, the climbers at the meet had gone wild on Ben Nevis, establishing three new Grade VIII routes and repeating other hard lines. Dave MacLeod was blown away by the action: “Everywhere you looked in Coire na Ciste, there were people on Grade VII and up routes,” he exclaimed. (See Big Day on Ben Nevis for a news report.)

We didn’t return to the lodge until 9:30 p.m., and the end-of-the-meet party was well under way. In the morning, groggy climbers slurped coffee before loading vans for the airport and train station. Infuriatingly, the weather and climbing conditions were perfect, with the first clear-blue skies we’d seen all week. “The Scottish weather gods are laughing at us,” one British host said. Of course, by early afternoon the storms would be back. Anyway, it was time to go home. 

Attending a BMC Meet

The British Mountaineering Council and Mountaineering Council of Scotland host International Winter Meets every two years; guests pay for their own transportation, but the weeklong meet itself costs just £65, including food, lodging, and local transportation. (The BMC also hosts a summer meet in North Wales in alternate years.) Guest climbers represent their national federation, which is the American Alpine Club in the United States. Members of the AAC are notified about upcoming meets; see www.americanalpineclub.org for information about joining. 

NAME
ADDRESS 1
ADDRESS 2
CITY
STATE & ZIP	-- AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY
EMAIL (req)

If I like Climbing, I'll pay just $14.95 and receive a full one-year subscription (10 issues in all) a 70% savings off the newsstand price! If for any reason I decide not to continue, I'll write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing.

*Offer valid in US only.
Click here for Canadian or International subscriptions.

PAY NOW AND GET
2 FREE BONUS ISSUES!

That's 12 issues in all, instead of 10, for the same low price of $14.95!

Get 2 free trial issues
plus a free gift!

Get updates on your phone:

Special Offers

MyUCTV.com
Bouldering.com

DISTRIBUTE
Climbing Magazine