spidean coire nan clach via fuselage gully

[mgmt!]

this weekend was a lomond mountaineering club weekend meet, the location was the inver hut near achnasheen. winter meets are booked long in advance, and with the fabulous torridon range nearby i was hoping for some good winter conditions. there was 16 in total in the hut, 11 adults and 5 kids. myself, florian, burly, ivonne, aaron, davef, martin, veronika, luca and his 3 kids, karin, david and their 2 kids. the hut itself was great, a big kitchen area, nice longe with fireplace and upstairs sleeping area with nice new mattresses provided. we arrived friday evening and over diner and some wine a plan was hatched by myself, florian burly and ivonne to get up early and walk up the coire dubh mor path to coire mhic fhearchair with the hope of some climbing on the triple buttresses.

inver hut

alarms set for 5 am, we got breakfast and drove to glen torridon and started up the path with headtorches. aprox 3 hours later we were at the base of the tripple buttresses.

a bare looking tripple buttress

the buttresses were bare of ice and best option was fuselage gully, the snow gully to the right in the above picture.as we started to head up toward the snow we came across various parts of the lancaster plane that crashed here in march 1951, killing the 8 crew members.

propeller with plaque

one of the engines

once at the snow we got on crampons, helmets, harnesses and ice axes and headed of up the gully. it was fairly easy going, we came to a junction were i think we should have forked left but we continued straight up to gain the ridge.

florian, ivonne and burly nearing the top of the gully

we were about 100 metres west of coinneach mhor but with about 60 metres of step ice clad rock. this was the best bit of the day giving a good bit of mixed climbing with a tricky little chimney before reaching the cairn of coinneach mhor. it was almost midday and we decide to return via spidean coire nan clach. took a bearing east in thick clag to the 956 cairn and south east and east to gain the ridge and trig point at 972 metres. we left our rucksacs here and walked over to the summit proper without crampons having taken them off on the ridge.

burly, florian, ivonne and me on summit

this proved quite tricky on the iced up rock approaching the summit. back to pick up rucksacs and descend south to the cairn at the top of the coire an laoigh. the slope was full of well compacted snow so we donned crampons and made our way down, i must admit to lots of bumming and ice axe arrest practice.
we made our way back to the car and stopped at the pub in kinlochewe for a well deserved pint before heading back to the hut.
once back at the hut diner on and a glass of wine by the fire i asked what the rest had been up to. martin and veronika had a walk up slioch, aaron and davidf done a traversse of beinn alligin doing the horns first and taking an age to descend coir nan laogh. luca, karin, david and the kids climbed carn mhartuin south east of the hut, finding a stag skeleton coming back to the hut with the antlers and skull for a trophy well done
after diner plans were made for the sunday, florian, burly and ivonne traveressed liathach, martin and veronika went on a recky to baosbheinn for a future wild camp spot, luca, karin, david, davidf and the kids doing a little top to the north of the hut. myself and aaron done sgurr nan ceannaichean and moruisg in glorious sunshine, a fine end to another lomond meet

[gaffr]

Never been in the Far west gully ...maybe the propeller is lodged in the other fork? Looked like good conditions for the crampons. Like so many of the wrecked aircraft on the Scottish hills....a few metres more and they would have cleared the hill.

[mountain thyme]

well done... an area i would definitely go back to.. loved that area and the 6 munros