UKC Forums - Beinn an Dothaidh

Beinn an Dothaidh - Conditions?

This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.

aldo56 04 Mar 2014

Anyone been up Beinn an Dothaidh recently? I notice someone logged Taxus at the weekend and wondered what conditions were like.

baileyswalk 04 Mar 2014

In reply to aldo56:
Went to do stairway to heaven on Sunday but it looked like a bit of a excavation job so just walked over the top instead. The crags are plastered, no ice to be seen and a huge cornice almost the length of the crag (that we noticed was cracked in places as we walked over the top). Also recent avalanche debris on the corrie floor from west gully and the basin/gully left of the main corrie area. Fair play to those guys on Taxus - I didn't fancy the look of it much.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/113708279@N03/

Post edited at 13:14

OP aldo56 04 Mar 2014

In reply to baileyswalk:

Cheers Bailey, sort of what I expected.

neilfish 04 Mar 2014

In reply to aldo56:

My mate and I climbed Taxus on Sunday, but the conditions were less than ideal. The gully was deep in snow (which was well formed and admittedly nice to climb) but this covered nearly all the gear and left very few belay options. Neither of us were able to climb the cornice at the top (and took longish falls) and so we abseiled/down-climbed the route as the spin-drift and small avalanches started coming down and got back to the car at about 9pm.

To be honest we were lucky to get out without being injured or worse, I'll remove the logbook entry if there's a risk of encouraging people to climb it as it seems dangerous at the moment. I'd added comments on the route in my logbook.

Here's a link to a photo showing the start of Taxus.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.php?id=235719

Exile 05 Mar 2014

In reply to neilfish:

Very honest, thanks for that.

OP aldo56 05 Mar 2014

In reply to neilfish:

Cheers Neil, very good information. Glad you guys made it out okay.

lithos 05 Mar 2014

In reply to neilfish:

> Here's a link to a photo showing the start of Taxus.

> http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.php?id=235719

and a massive cornice !! Glad you got away with it

Jamie B 05 Mar 2014

In reply to neilfish:

> I'll remove the logbook entry if there's a risk of encouraging people to climb it as it seems dangerous at the moment.

It's still there. Please make it go away, the logbooks are often a more potent decision-making tool than they should be.

Speaking of decision-making, with hindsight why did you go for a North-facing gully-line on a day when the avalanche forecast looked like this? http://www.sais.gov.uk/forecast-archive2.asp?id=4361

Not getting on your case, we've all done it. But I think some chat on here about the decision-making processes that get people into trouble would be worthwhile, no?

neilfish 05 Mar 2014

In reply to Jamie B:

The logbook entry has now been removed. I had put in the comments section for the route a summary of how I found the conditions and didn't recommend anyone else to climb it in current conditions. Initially thinking that those potentially wanting to climb at the mountain would see the logbook entry, see the comments and then be better informed about conditions. Not all "conditions" pages stay high enough up the discussion board to be easily seen.

I think a discussion of decision making processes would be useful, but probably not in this discussion thread. It is my opinion that threads should stick to the topic for which they were originally intended.

I've already admitted I made a poor decision. I feel I have been lucky enough to learn from it, and felt I had to reply to the orignal poster as it was my logbook post that prompted it.