Aonach Mor & Creise

Tuesday (28th Dec) myself, Martin and Andy headed up to Aonach Mor catching the climbers Gondola up at 8am. There are two approaches to the West face, either the traverse in, across the climber's ridge into Corrie an Lochain or to slog up to the summit and abseil/down-climb down Easy Gully I. In the past I've always traversed in but that day we decided to try the latter which actually felt much easier and quicker despite more ascent. The cornice was fairly sizable so we dug a snow bollard to abseil over the cornice, and down-climbed from their. Apparently it can often be passed without abseil on skier's left but due to poor visibility we couldn't see this.

Myself leading up towards the mixed chimney/groove on the second pitch.

Once below the West Face we traversed until underneath the Ribbed Walls area. We decided on White Shark IV 4 ***. The first pitch gave two fairly short but steep ice pitches and ends at a good peg belay on the left on the snowfield above. For the second we climbed the mixed chimney to the right which had ice in the back and a crack on the face to torque to give 10m of fairly sustained just off-vertical mixed climbing. Above the snow conditions began to deteriorate a bit, I imagine this pitch is usually either good ice or perhaps turf and neve but on this day it was unconsolidated snow ice which made for some quite scary runout climbing. After this a final short pitch over the cornice, which was easily passable to the right led us to the top. It was an excellent route, if a little tricky in the warm conditions we climbed it in.

The nest day (Wednesday) joined by Lewis and Mark the 5 of us headed up to Creise at the Eastern end of Glencoe. We parked at the ski center and walked a little further rather then trying to cross the river Etive further to the West. The approach took us a while but we got good views of the King's Tear which looks like a awesome easy ice route on the North Face of Stob a' Ghlais Chorie. We played on ice falls which have formed on the stream on the approach to the corrie and Lewis got his first taste of pure ice.

Inglis Clark Ridge on the skyline, with the ice pitch partially visible at the start.

Once geared up we made our way to the base of the Inglis Clark Ridge III, with Lewis and Andy climbing with me and Martin and Mark climbing as a pair. The first pitch is a pure ice pitch of 30-40m depending on where you start, with the crux being at the top. Due tot he warm temperature the ice was plastic which made the climbing fairly easy. Lewis took a bit of a tumble seconding one of the short vertical sections but gamely got back on and finished it. After this the line is open to several variations. My team kept crampons on and we climbed a series of snowed up turfy chimneys and grooves to the left of the crest moving together and short pitching, whereas Martin and Mark ditched the spikes and stuck to the crest which was scoured of snow and ice for most parts. Both were satisfying and we ended up at the summit at 4pm just as the light was fading.

Taking a rest on the descent.

We descended a snow gully a few hundred meters skier's right of the ridge which lead us into the Corrie base, before crossing the river and gaining the path which eventually led us back to ski center just as the weather began to deteriorate. This was quite tedious and due to Lewis hurting his ankle tripping up we moved fairly slowly and only reached the car around 8pm.