I’ve been based around Fort William for the last 5 days. On Saturday Andy, Rob and I climbed the very good East Ridge of the North Buttress of Stob Ban in Glen Nevis. The snow was down below the toe of the lower buttress and the turf was well frozen, so we climbed this on the way to the flat platform on the ridge, before climbing the route as described in the guidebook. We then took in the summit of Stob Ban before descending.
On Sunday Andy and I climbed a very windy Dorsal Arete on Stob Coire nan Lochan. We started via one of the direct starts, which hadn’t been climbed since the last snowfall, so required a bit of clearing and descended Broad Gully. Large sections of the crag were still pretty black and the recent snow hadn’t consolidated.
Monday saw Alan and I heading up to the CIC hut with strong winds blowing down the Allt a’Mhuilinn. After dumping our gear in the hut we had a quick look up the first section of Tower Ridge and then abseiled back down. On Tuesday the strong South Easterlies were forecast to drop during the day so we had a late start and headed up in to Creag Coire na Ciste and climbed Central Gully. This had some really enjoyable climbing, but the ice wasn’t great for screws, so is probably an overall grade or so harder than normal.
With lower winds forecast today we had an early start and climbed Tower Ridge. It was thawing lower down on the route, but good higher up. For this time of year there’s quite a lot of exposed rock and the through route under the fallen block chimney is passable. There is some ice on Ben Nevis, but most of the normal icelines that would have formed at this time of year aren’t currently there (e.g. Italian and Vanishing). It was thawing at most levels when we left this afternoon.
I’ll add photos to Facebook over the next few days.
