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On the drive up the A82 most hills looked bare so I was hoping Bidean would hold some snow. First time I've been up this path, it's not shown on the OS maps but I used Bing maps to view an arial photo and draw a gpx route.
View from the car park, from here it's back to the A82, across the road bridge and through a gate. The path is good, couple of wet scrambly bits though.
Waterfalls & Aonach Dubh crags.
Back down to car park, path was fairly busy for a Saturday but the Stob Coire nan Lochan car parks were busier.
Further up, the path gets less easy to follow - it goes down to the burn for a couple of sections then back up. Stob Coire nam Beith ahead here - I was planning to go over it on the way back and descend the snow slopes at the col on its right. Bidean is on the left of SCNB:
Back to Aonach Eagach:
Couple of climbers make their way up Summit Gully on SCNB, met a few later who had been on it so it's possibly next on the list...
Probably came to far up towards SCNB so had to cross angled snow when I turned left for Bidean.
Round the corner and Bidean appears again.
Last bit of the approach, the target is in the middle of the pic here. Diamond Buttress is on the left and Church Door Buttress on the right with Collie's Pinnacle in between. Central Gully goes up between the 2 buttresses so you have to head around Collies Pinnacle. Either way there's a step, Grade I on the right and Grade II on the left.
Getting closer, bit of clag coming in.
On the left of Collie's Pinnacle, thought I'd give this a try first.
Snow was fairly firm, the tricky step was on ice though. All the winter stuff I've done so far has been on snow so I wasn't sure about the steep ice - decided to back off & go the easy way...
...the step up on the other side was also ice so I got a bit of practise on it anyway.
Top of Collie's Pinnacle.
Nice snow on the way up, getting pretty exhaused after the steep walk in though and the calves were burning with all the front pointing.
Higher up there's another fork, easy on the left and harder on the right this time. I went to the right since I'd bottled the earlier one. Again there was a steep icy step but I had more confidence that the crampons and axes would hold this time.
Looking back down the gully from the exit. Stuck a poly bag on a rock here & had a seat, completely knackered.
Turned left on a short, narrow rocky ridge then I was on the ridge between SCNL and Bidean. A few folk were making their way up from SCNL.
Short walk to the summit, tricky navigating off it in clag to Stob Coire nam Beith so the GPS was handy. Met a couple descending SCNB, they knew some of the climbers who died in an avalanche in Central Gully two years ago. Not much ascent to SCNB, again it was tricky finding the right descent ridge from the summit with poor visibility:
Back down towards the road.
Descending from the col.
Path to the car park is a bit slippy but doesn't take long to get there, picked up a bottle of Highland Park on the way back to help with the calf pain
