UKC

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

I think this one has to be one of the best winter photos here

http://img.ukclimbing.com/i/87093.jpg

Everything that is "fun" about climbing in Scotland in one picture

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: the winter pic of centurion from last winter is something special, im a big fan of pete macphersons photos.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

The Dr Strangeglove night time cornice on Ben Alder (Left Gully) one?

In reply to Tim Chappell: did they find the body ?

In reply to mux:

The loon who's in the shot walked away from the edge, then (IIRC), round the side to where we were watching him with our hearts in our mouths, did a double-take, and walked off shaking his head at his own idiocy.

In reply to galpinos:

Did Dr Strangelove ever say how they actually got out of there?

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

There's also the SeanB 'dander along the Dorsal' one...

In reply to niallk:
No.

We were fairly tired. I had initially tried going in the other direction only to discover myself crawling through the inside of the cornice and deciding that this was a no no sent Nick to look in the other direction. This proved equally unfortunate so we had a brief debate about what to do - Ab off or spend the night.

We decided to camp out, climbing on a 50m single meant the 300m retreat did not look all that attractive whilst knackered in the dark.

We had a blizzard bag and a 2 man bothy bag between us, so chopped the foot off the blizzard bag and each got in then popped the bothy bag over the top.

A warm but sweaty and cramped night ensued, and we abseiled off the next morning. When we made it back to the tent ( A brand new Quasar) we found that it had been destroyed by strong winds in the valley which we were unaware of under the cornice.

now wonder about digging a way out - but the cornice was massive and I assumed at the time it was a dangerous game that would be very tiring and take forever.

In reply to Dr.Strangeglove:
some of the guides mention that tunnels inside the cornice can lead out, if I was going to tunnel out I'd certainly prefer to do that from a tunnel inside the cornice than right under the lip. I've only done this once and don't aim to do it too often as it's obviously pretty dodgey

In reply to Dr.Strangeglove:
PS its a great picture and I'm glad to finally hear how the adventure ended

In reply to Dr.Strangeglove: How did you secure yourselves?

Al

In reply to Dr.Strangeglove:

Thanks for sharing, good to have heard the full story. Have been considering a trip to Ben Alder this Winter, perhaps we'll make it earlier in the season!

In reply to niallk:
same here, I'd also love to get over to Braeriach

In reply to Dr.Strangeglove:


ps Took me about 25 mins to batter a fairly minor trench through a cornice on Lochnagar once and have heard of people taking a fairly exhausting 2+ hours to dig a tunnel through cornices on Aonach Mor (needless to say they missed the last gondola). Can only imagine how long it would take to dig through one that had gone almost fully tubular.

In reply to everyone:

Some great choices there - cheers everyone.

Jack

In reply to tradlad:

The step below the cornice was pretty large, we dug a trench downwards so we had a bit of a lip
on the outside. Had some screws with us which we placed into the cornice (which seemed very solid).

I think you could exit the climb even with a large cornice if you headed right about 2 pitches below the top - we saw that from the bottom but the guidebook suggested going left, which is what we did. I wonder if the book meant "cliff left".

In reply to petestack: Oh! Ooops :oD Dunno how that happened! Not sure if there were meant to be other photos there, or I just hit paste 3x! Not sure I can't be arsed to go through nearly 5000 winter photos again though.

Tis a damn good photo though!