Crowberry Ridge Scramble

[spiderman]

Reading thehawk_3 excellent report of the North Buttress scramble brought back memories of many happy days scrambling solo on the Buachaille. In the eighties I had purchased Noel williams ''Scrambles in Lochaber'' and was doing all the scrambles in Glencoe from the book. I found the route descriptions hard to follow in some cases but the route which had me baffled was No 46 crowberry Ridge grade 3(S). This is according to Noel the hardest scramble in the book. I had tried three times to get the correct route but each time I managed to get to Crowberry Tower but I was off route over to the right of the right of the ridge. This day after another failed attempt I came down the easy walking part of Crowberry Tower and sat down at the top of the steep part to try and figure out the route. You can imagine my joy to see a lone scrambler about to complete the steep part of the route. I asked him where the route went after Abraham's ledge, because I knew I was correct up to that point. He said to go right along the ledge and drop into the gully( I used a piece of tape to do this as you are a few feet off the ground)
Then walk up the gully for about 100 yards and a ledge rises diagonally back onto the ridge. I went back down curved ridge to the start of the scramble and completed it.
I would like to know of others experience of doing this scramble

[gaffr]

I think that Naismith made the first route up Crowberry ridge and then a few years later Abraham made the direct route on the ridge which has the fine pitch from 'the ledge'.....a good few grades more difficult than the moderate original route. Above this pitch leftwards the rock was straightforward up to the tower. In '64 we used the rope etc. Maybe the choice of routes from the ledge below the eponymous traverse bit causes the confusion here.... it seemed just natural to launch into the pitch so I don't have any knowledge of the other ways here.

[malky_c]

I've never done it but I believe Noel took it out of the second edition of his book because the general consensus was that it was too hard to be described as a scramble. I'm assuming it is also a graded climb?

[gaffr]

That seems to the right thing here. The original Naismith route does 'kind-of' bypass the real meat of the Crowberry ridge.....and the route descibed in the old scramble book (1984 edition) really only joins the crowberry ridge proper higher up. We thought that the 'direct way', done around 1900, was a good VD in 1964...... maybe it is given as S today?