In reply to Fultonius: I'm not sure if its directly related to rising standards but I feel there is definitely a lack of apprenticeship and awareness of a need for basic winter mountaineering skills/a progression. They are only anecdotes but:
-2 very strong climbers attempting one of their first winter routes and successfully nailing -something hard in Coire an Lochain and getting to the top successfully in poor visibility. They had to 'phone a friend' to ask which way to turn to get off at the top of the route.
-2 fit lads who had been drytooling all autumn in preparation for their first winter season. They made a good swift ascent of The Message and both tripped over their feet descending a steep snow slope and went the distance.
-Strong youth goes to solo the Runnel with no understanding of what the crux will be like with no snow on it and makes it up .... just. "But it's only Grade II". (Quite apart from the effect his distress had on oped parties in the area).
-Being asked on top of Carn Dearg on Ben Nevis by two well equipped young climbers if this was the top of Ben Nevis.
-Being followed from near the summit of Ben Nevis by 4 climbers from a university club all of whom had forgotten their maps.
-2 well equipped climbers rescued from Comb Gully when unable to go up or down.... they through they were in No. 2 Gully.
Common factors: almost all of them were fit and strong and capable of high grades at the wall or dry tooling, lots of shiney gear, Nomics, youth. Now I've gotten into plenty scrapes and tried to learn from plenty mistakes (and still do). But I wasn't exposed to quite the same culture of cool kit, hard routes and physical training at their age. It takes more than being able to drytool a D8 to make a good winter climber but that message is less commonly portrayed by gear manufacturers and when magazines do encourage the right attitude to all round skills of course its never as sexy as the latest X,11.
Or am I just an old fart?