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.