Saturday 23 February 2019

Mountain guiding around the cairngorms

I have had two weeks of nice private guiding around the Cairngorms. The weather has been really fickle with sometimes good snow cover then amazing warming events which thawed away much of the snow. The lower graded gullies have remained complete and the snow pack surface has remained quite hard and first this in the morning ice axe placements have been reliable  enough to allow some good climbing,skills training,  and experience enhancing fun climbing. The advantage of the thaw is that its much easier to place running belays and anchors as the rocks are clear of snow and the cracks easy to see. The down side is that many of the rocks are unfrozen so the rock fall potential is very high and some cracks which are sometimes frozen solid in the cold and freezing winter conditions are much weaker now that the terrain is wet and unfrozen.
Peter and Luke

Peter topping out on the Seam

Franke in Spiral gully

Frankie on belay

Central gully with Frankie

Frankie  topping out after some mixed climbing.

Sunny in the background but much cooler where we were!

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