Bruce, Ali and I headed over to The Loch Avon Basin today with the intention of climbing on Hell’s Lum. However, by the time we arrived the sun was catching the crag and a fair amount of ice/sun wheels were coming down from the crag. There were two parties who looked to be heading for Deep Cut Chimney and a party further right on Kiwi Gully I think.
We headed over to Stag Rocks and climbed something around The Accidental Tourist (a line between that and Truly Madly Chimbley). Starting as for The Accidental Tourist the 1st pitch followed a steep groove and small chimney (rather than heading left) to belay on a rib just left and below the chimney of T.M.C. ; the 2nd pitch moved through a v-notch and up slabs/overalps and the 3rd pitch was up easy snow slopes. Overall about tech 4 on the day, but quite bold in places with some relatively cruddy snow and ice.
North facing crags have large build ups of wind slab (see photo of Coire an t-Sneachda). The south facing crags still had a layer of fresh snow on top of older snow. The sun was stripping ice/snow from the south facing crags during the day with water running behind ice on rocks. The turf was well frozen. Light winds and no precipitation during the day.
