Right as promised here is the report on our attempt at the pinnacle ridge we set of at around 09.00hrs after cheeking the weather report and deciding whether to go for it or not, the report wasn’t good but we thought that we would give it a go. On the way up the waterproofs were on and off every 10min slowing the progress down but we finally reached the start of the ridge and begun to climb the rock was loose and wet witch wasn’t to bad but as wee gained height we were also presented with snow cover and ice, we stopped for lunch before the really steep ground to decide whether to turn back or push on as this was the point of no return the weather was holding and we all felt good so decided to go for it so harnesses on and onwards and upwards we went t. to the first absail point this is ware the temperature dropped as the wind increased once we were all safely down the absail we were faced with a thin sloping loose snowy ledge so decided to rig a safety line around to the next safe section . Once there we again started to climb but the ground was ice snowy and loose witch made the route more dangerous than we would have liked on gaining the second absail point we found that it was no longer there so we decided to down climb into the top of the gully . At this point we had another decision to make we had dun the ridge but still had the last peek to gain the munro the ground ahead was once again loose and covered in snow and ice and as we were all cold and tired we decided to retreat down the snow filled gully witch looked like a decent route . We rigged up an ab point and started to descend but as Chris went over the first drop into what looked like soft snow he disappeared into a rather large hole between the rock and what turned out to be around 8ft of solid ice covered snow that we had to kick steps in all the way down to the bolder field around 200 m below as max was the last to absail down he suddenly stopped around half way down then started again but he told us when he got down that the rope had been damaged . When we got to a safer position we stopped to have something to eat and look at the rope wooo it was cut almost through . This gave us all a bit of a shock ( see the pick) as you can see the rope was no longer of any use as the cut was in the middle so the in pin trip was postponed for another trip and a more leisurely walk up to the old man was taken instead via the café in portree for breakfast then back to Perth then down to sunny leigh-on-see on mun. I hope you have enjoyed looking at these pick’s as much as I enjoyed taking them. Thanks for all thee comments
KEN
The start of the day with jackets off
Johnny and max on the way in
Getting closer
Dolly on the approach
Getting steeper
And wetter
Johnny looking a bit damp
Getting wetter
And steeper
A well earned rest and a bite to eat
Time to kit up and push on
Steeper still and wetter
No 2
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Chris on the first ab
Followed by dolly
Johnny the last man on the way down
Johnny and max ascending one of the more slippery gullies with loos gravel under soft snow
Dolly abing into no4/5 gully
Chris sabotaging the rope
Dolly descending the kicked steps to the bolder field
Right take a look at the rope
A relieved max pointing at the damaged rope he just used to ab down
This shot was taken on Monday’s walk but shows the gully that we descended the last one before gaining the top
