Out with Cliff on The Buachaille today. We climbed Crowberry Gully by the right hand fork. This wasn’t in great condition. The snow in the easier angled sections of the gully hadn’t consolidated as we’d expected given the warmer weather over the weekend followed by a couple of frosty nights and made for pretty heavy going. The build up on the steeper pitches was suprisingly thin. The initial chockstone pitch required a bold approach to reach good hooks, what I think was the thin crack chimney was full of soft snow and hard to start (we bypassed it on the right with a delicate traverse back in to the gully); the cave pitch was very thinly iced for the first 4m or so, giving a bold lead with no gear.
The weather was superb; sunshine and below freezing all day at crag level with a light north-east wind. The snow line is currently sitting about the 750m to 800m mark in Glen Coe and the Southern Highlands.
Moved fairly closely most of the way up with Alasdair and partner, which made for a very social day. I forgot my camera today, so will hopefully post a photo or two when Cliff gets a chance to send some through.
