In reply to benbers: Didn't get to garbh coire beag. I got quite unwell walking from culra to ben alder on saturday morning, couldn't walk more than 100m at a time, felt terrible, partener carried all the gear in, what a hero. And I ran out of toilet paper on the walk, bad times indeed, had to use snow only, must have done 10 or so, began to wonder in the back of my mind if it could possibly be appendicitis. Walking was feeling really bad indeed, so we abandoned the walk in.
But we wanted to get something done, we figured lets do something new on the side of the long leachas ridge. Got up close and tried one line, but it was way too hard and unprotected and I knew it was not good at all, big falls did not appeal, as I felt sensitive in my stomach to say the least. So basically climbed up an easy gully for a bit, a mix of frozen and unfrozen turf, then got onto a nice ledge, I was feeling a bit better, onto a fantastic next pitch, a lovely crack line for the start, got first piece of gear in, a hex in a camming horizontal crack, slipped, rock shears off, gear is out, belayer dodges the large rock whizzing towards him beautifully, I catch myself with a frantic hook. Climb on, further up the crack, difficult but with good rests, then a traverse to the left, before dynoing around an arete onto a piece of frozen turf. From then it was steep turf to the top, fun, but a bit easy. Don't Die of Diarrhea, IV 4. Fortunately the climbing scared the shit out of me, don't know what I'd have done had I needed to go while roped up on lead. The descent down the long leachas was quite edgy, several times large sections slid below us, and there were some very large snowballs, some more than 6ft in diametre, merrily bouncing their way down the slope.
Might write it up in the UKC logbook if I can find the time.
