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A local hill I have been up a couple of times before via the ridge between the bothy and Stuc a'Chroin, but always in summer.
A very dark and snowy morning greeted us, but we were keen to be both out up the hill and avoid the crowds wandering the hills. Amazing how many folk are keen to get out at the moment.
First on the parking and path a little after 8, being local helps.
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
The first pull through the woods is always steep - I have been up here dozens of times chasing DofE groups - and it is never easy with cold muscles.
As we emerged from the woods the wind remained low, however you could hear and see the movement across the valley higher up. We took the turn to the east and decided with such a blanket of snow to not try and follow the summer path. The usual path sneaks around a few very steep outcrops, it would be safer to stay into the bowl of the broken corrie we thought. Cue an hour of seriously hard going in fairly unstable and steep snow.
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
A couple of the steep sections caused anxiety, with a fluffy layer of snow between 5 and 50cm over a hard frozen ice layer and an underlying wet snow. layer to the ground. Classic avalanche time. We used as many 'islands of safety' as we could sticking to the heathery sections and avoiding some of the bowls. See the cracking.
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
The wind was coming in big gusts as forecast, complete with a lot of spindrift. Easy to just kneel down as you could see the gust coming and wait the 20 seconds at a time for it to pass.
As things got icier we donned our new Nortec Ice spikes. We are trying these out as mrs_oab doesn't have suitable crampon boots, and even if we did have them we are not planning front pointing or 'full on' winter climbs. The spikes seem to tread a good line of assisting over icy patches, without encouraging sillyness. We are impressed - I had sought ones with an extra retaining band but this isn't needed in fact. I was even seeking steeper areas to try them, with good results. You do end up flexing ankle to keep all the spikes down, very different from using the more rigid boots and crampons in technique.
Some nifty navigation was needed as we gained the top. We knew the summit was to our left/north from our route, but the near white-out wasn't helping with about 10m visibility of features. A few minutes of wandering with compass saw us pick up an icy path with yesterdays crampon marks visible, so we followed the last 100m distance to the summit.
We decided to head down rather than try to find Stuc a'Chroin top - frankly we had enjoyed things up to now, were warm and tired, so the thought of cold and even more tired was not appealing!
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
The weather cleared a little on the way down - we had perhaps 100m of visibility for most of the top, allowing us to take a different route back down. By now a fair old line of folk were sweating up the hill, and as we broke out of the worst of the clag the temperature rose above freezing. This meant many were wading up in wet snow - not pleasant. To our delight much of the steep areas were bum-slideable, and so our descent was pretty rapid in places.
Ben Each by
Matt Robinson, on Flickr
A fine hill, but a reminder that even 'little' local hills offer a full-on winter experience, with challenging physical conditions, awkward navigation and wider winter hazards present. Really nice to be out though.
