Lessons in Hubris on the Monadhliath

[Scooter1]

This is less a walkreport and more a lesson in terrible decision making

The Sun had just begun to rise as I pulled into the car park in Glen Banchnor. Hazy streaks of orange and blue crept above the hills of the Monadhliath plateau as Huw, Sam and I got out of the car ready for a day we; to put bluntly, expected would be a piece of cake. 25km, sure that’s quite lengthy, but with less than 1000m of elevation gain in the whole day, it would surely be a breeze. Huw and I had done a similarly sized route in under 5 hours the Dinner Meet prior, and Sam’s probably the fastest walker in the club, so we were pretty certain we could fire out Walkhighlands’ lowest rated Munros with enough time to spare for a nice long shower before GUMC's annual dinner.

That I suppose was mistake number one for the day, but we’ll gloss over that one as mistake number two is far more entertaining: ‘Doesn’t look like there’s much snow up there, I reckon I’ll just take my poles’, I said as I took my ice axe off my bag and chucked it back in my boot. This is of course an excellent decision in the Cairngorms in February.
We blasted forward initially on well-defined estate tracks, jokingly aiming to make a kilometre every 8 minutes and be down in 3 hours. Alas, the quality of the tracks began to decline and the plodding became slower, with the true path becoming guesswork and we were essentially hopping between bogs. The clouds had also descended to about 600 metres, covering the Monadhliath’s peaks. We knew we had to make it to the opposite side of Gleann Ballach (Glen Ball-ache) and start pushing up the northern spur of Carn Dearg. As we pressed on we realised the ground ahead was far steeper than we anticipated. Upon checking our maps and GPS we realised that we were in fact far further down the Glen than we thought we were.


Speeding off towards Glen Ball-ache

Upon realising this we decided to enact Mistake 3: Disregarding the initial plan as we didn’t want to go back on ourselves and add maybe, 15 minutes to our day, instead, dramatically changing our route and going up the far steeper, rockier East face of Carn Dearg. We justified this as there was a small bit in which there wasn’t rocks, so we decided to shoot up that (The crudely drawn red line). We decided these so-called rocky bits would cause little inconvenience as the Monadhliath is famously featureless and flat. So off we went.



Marching up the East face, it started getting a wee bit… snowier. Just patches, I thought as I tightly clenched my poles, nothing to worry about. Everything will be fine. Well, it kept getting snowier and we finally came across the slightly less rocky bit. Unfortunately, it was filled with snow. Not ideal. Ah it’s fine, we’ve done plenty of winter mountaineering (Mistake 4), we can get up this gully, we’ll just kick steps. Sam and Huw can go first with their axes, then I’ll shoot up the ladder with me poles. So we set off, not able to see the top, not really sure how much we needed to climb up, with nowhere near the right kit to be doing this. Just equipped with our amazing mountaineering knowledge. Bunch of pricks.

Sam started our march, quickly followed by Huw, I waited a brief second watching them build the snowy ladder into the mists. As I began to ascend, I heard a crunch above me, Huw’s foot had fallen through Sam’s step. ‘The snow’s a bit soft’ he warned. It had been a warm February in truth, t-Snechda on Cairn Gorm was nearly empty of snow, so everything was clearly in a state of melt. Nice and stable. With that in mind I climbed gingerly but quickly caught up with the pair of them.


Sam and Huw's stairway to Heaven

We reached a grassy section and, after doing some tricky mixed climbing on loose, soggy ground, realised we were far further from the summit plateau than we expected, at least 20 metres, and it was steepening, not ideal considering the snow’s stability. It did however seem to have a slightly easier ascent if we could just get a little higher and traverse left. Easy enough surely. We continued pressing on, I was largely focused on getting any traction out of my poles (I was quickly realising I should have maybe, MAYBE, taken my axe) when I heard a massive crunch and Huw shouting ‘SAMMMMM’. I looked up to watch as the snow beneath Sam collapsed and he began to fall, first onto snow, then onto rocks, then into the air and then back onto the snow, making a stop right where we’d started climbing after finally getting his axe into the snow. In hindsight, he looked weirdly graceful as he fell. ‘You alright Sam!?’ I called down. ‘I’m okay! The snow is soft! Just need to catch my breath’ (Sam’s a f-ing beast). Huw and I looked at each other, both greatly relieved, before sharing a dawning look of dread. With the snow broken by Sam’s fall, and the trickiness of the terrain we’d just ascended. We were stuck.

‘Sam we’re not going to be able to get down to you! We’re going to have to ascend directly up!’ I relayed to Sam. ‘Okay! I’m going to try finding another way up!’ and with that we enacted Mistake 5, we split up. Huw and I looked up towards the gully we had ahead. Wet, grassy, full of loose rocks and steep. Simply put, barely feasible to climb up and suicidal to down climb. The only way, unfortunately, was up. And so began a desperate process, Huw and I dragging our way slowly up the slope, looking for any kind of holds, digging in with Huw’s axe and my poles (which had become quite cumbersome in truth and I couldn’t put them away as I dare not remove my bag and shift my weight). Removing loose rocks and dropping them down the valley to create any kind of holds for our feet, jamming our hands into rabbit holds, soaking our trousers as we tried to wedge ourselves into any feasible crevasse. I remember my knees were shaking, a mix of Elvis leg and pure cold. Huw, who’s jacket was stuck in his bag, was suffering even more so.

At around the 1-and-a-half-hour mark in the gully, Huw made a manoeuvre that was only possible by digging his axe into some heather. At this point Huw and I swapped his axe for my poles, which made my going far easier but far trickier for Huw. In my defence, he had moved out of swapping distance after making said move, so his loss (at least that’s how I see it). We reached what appeared to be the top of the gully. We had two options here, a soft snowy slope or what looked to be a blocky but loose rock face. Considering how loose the rock had been so far, I opted for the snow slope, Huw favoured the rocks, so we decided to split up once again (Mistake 6!).

So I push up onto the melting 80 degree snow patch armed with a single walking axe and a delusional amount of willpower. I made a tricky move up onto the snow patch before beginning to kick steps into the slope, packing the snow beneath me to ensure that my footholds don’t just decide to give up on me. This is where I quickly realised the snow above me is only maybe half a foot thick. Nowhere near enough to support my stupid sized feet and fat arse. Beneath the snow was also just iced over rocks, so there was nothing to hold onto to continue my ascent.

I hear a crack and an ‘Oh f***!’ I turn to my right to see Huw pulling out a massive chunk of rock that he had previously been climbing on. After a small wrestle with the rock (thankfully he had good feet), he pulled it away from him and chucked it down the gully below. He laughed, bewildered. ‘This is so mess up’ he calls, ‘Aye’ I called back. I continued to watch him as he managed to whale his way over onto the ledge above. ‘Can you see the top?’ I shouted. ‘I think so! Do you think you can get over to me?’ Huw replied. Perched on my snowy footholds I suddenly realised no, I probably can’t. The snow above would be impossible to climb even with the right kit and if truth be told, I didn’t trust my ability to downclimb to where Huw had started climbing from.

At this point I thought of my Mum. How she’d be quite upset if I died prematurely. If I were to slip now I would fall about 20 metres down a pretty nasty gully. I am no Sam Kenyon, that might be fatal. Speaking of Sam we had no idea where he was, he could easily have taken a nastier fall in another gully, Huw had nearly been killed by a rock and I was considering an embarrassing Mountain Rescue Call. Shortcuts are silly. As I looked down the gully I briefly considered the option of jumping from my perch in such a way as to hit as much snow as possible on the way down, rather than letting my Elvis leg determine my trajectory. Mountain Rescue would probably take at least 3 hours which I wasn’t sure I could remain here for and in truth was struggling to consider what they’d actually be able to do to help me. Nevertheless, I decided to take my phone out and call mountain rescu-

‘Oh Huw, Bereal’s just went off!’ I shouted, dating this article drastically and really showing my age. I found this very funny and decided I’d take my bereal just in case it was the last ever photo of me to exist. Now some would suggest that this is Mistake 7 but I would disagree, as this lapse in concentration allowed for me to have a moment of clarity as I checked through my phone notifications, including one thankfully from Sam: ‘I’m at the top now’ sent 30 minutes ago. Thank God. At least one of us were safe. After relaying this to Huw I decided I had a decision to make: Phone MRT or downclimb to the rock face Huw had climbed. I was quite scared but decided MRT would take too long to reach me, and quite frankly I didn’t want to keep Huw and Sam waiting.


Bereal!

I carefully took the first step down, praying that the ice axe would stay in the snow. Then I repeated said action, again and again until I made it to the rock face. Huw shouted from above, ‘careful, most of it is still loose!’ Great. I remember doing some quite tricky moves in the wet, levering loose rocks with the ice axe as I made my way up the wobbliest boulder problem in history. I whaled my way up onto the ledge, breathed a sigh of relief, then looked up to see Huw another 10 metres above me, beneath a small cornice. Class.

‘I can’t cut through I need the axe’ He shouted down (somehow my poles hadn’t helped), ‘Okay just give me a minute’. I started heading up the last slope, this was thankfully quite nice, it was covered largely in grippy turf which the axe sank into like a knife into toffee (Huw had struggled a bit more without his axe but I digress). I reached Huw in a couple of minutes, we exchanged sighs before I heroically stated, ‘I’m going to get us out of here’ (what a fanny) and began cutting through the cornice. I didn’t know how long I’d have to cut for, it could have been one metre or ten. As I cut through, Huw cleared the loose snow away from my feet, preventing me from slipping. At last, I saw solid land ahead of me, in my excitement I leapt forward and graciously wormed my way onto solid ground, screaming with joy at my own survival. I then remembered that Huw was still hanging off the edge of a steep slope and gingerly returned to the edge to pass Huw his ice axe back (in exchange for my poles). He pulled himself up and got off the cornice. We hugged and laughed, grateful for our own survival. Our clever shortcut had taken us two hours to get up, really helped us speed the day up.


Huw gets over the edge

We found Sam chilling by Carn Dearg’s cairn, he’d had gotten up a less steep gully and had enjoyed his lunch by the summit. Despite falling off a cliff, he was quite chipper and just happy that we’d managed to make it up (tis but a scratch!). We quickly discussed whether we wanted to continue the route or head back down. We agreed that returning to Kincraig with only one third of the munros on our route would be an abject failure we decided to press on through the rest of the route.


The summit of Carn Dearg

This turned out to be, at last, a good decision. Despite low visibility and decently high winds on the plateau, which made navigation a bit of a challenge. The bogs had frozen over, which made for easy going across the vast nothingness of the Monadhliath and the summits of Carn Sgulain and A’ Chailleach were quickly bagged, they were featureless and dull, so I shan’t elaborate on them further. Descending off the Plateau was far easier than our ascent, quickly bombing down a fell running track and straight back down to the car, joking about our misfortunes as we headed down.


Sam using one of my poles on a river crossing as we descended (see they were useful!)

Obviously, we got very lucky. If Sam had fallen onto hard ground, or onto his head I’d be writing an obituary. Likewise, one misplaced step from Huw or I in the gully could have led us to a similar fate. We were a typical case of headstrong amateur mountaineers, ignoring obvious risks due to presumed knowledge. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Every one of the mistakes I listed could have been fatal. And they’re just the mistakes we’re aware we made. The importance now is taking the events of that day out and learning from them. You can never be too careful, even on the ‘easy’ and ‘safe’ routes, by simply going up there you put yourself at risk. So it’s best to be wary, as it’s a lot more fun on the hills when you make it back in one piece. And take an ice axe during winter, Christ.