Conditions-
Warming up slightly and dumping large quantities of snow has covered up or thawed out the good stuff from last week. Its a waiting game for temps to drop for climbs to come back into nick. The corries are very slow going so approach by ridges until things do cool down.
Routes-
The brief cold mid-week last week allowed one very good new route for Beads & Matt. Original Route on the 2nd pinnacle of Gillean gave 3 or 4 run-out pitches with the top one being an absolute cracker. IV,4 and 3 stars.
The Traverse-
Undoubtedly the best place to be is the Ridge crest which is holding very little powder and the covering well consolidated. There was a brief period early January when this wasn't the case but, if the weather had played ball lots of folk could have been getting this elusive tick. Don't beat yourselves up though because I reckon last Tues & Wed was the only weather window it could have happened in and Tuesday had been forecast awful.
Suggestions-
It's easy to be dismissive of Ridge sections because they aren't "real" climbs with pitches & grades. We roped along the narrow snow crest of Sgurr a Bhasteir today (which is normally a walk in summer) with steep drops on either side and one of the guys declared it as fine a snow ridge as he'd ever climbed in Scotland. If you want some proper alpine training, as well as some serious adrenalin, come and try any of the sections you've just "popped" along in summer!
