In reply to Mike Lates: We decided we didn't fancy Salmon Leap with one half rope and 3 people on Saturday, there was a huge difference to when we had been in there on Tuesday.
Since Tuesday maybe 6" of wet snow had fallen and stuck to a lot of the ice, so there was a cruddy layer to clear through. There is good ice underneath if you can be bothered digging though...lots of good ice.
The snowpack was fine on lower level aspects up to the coire floor (can't remember the height off the top of my head), but got increasingly poor as height was gained. We went a little of the way up George before deciding against it given the poor layers in the snowpack were increasing with height. Avalanche/heavy spindrift debris at the bottom of most of the width of the coire from the exit slopes also put us off. I know some guys topped out on Poachers and indeed said the exit slopes were dodgy, and they pitched down The Way Up and again commented it was weak and very poorly bonded.
We then went along to the Pinnacles at the west end of the ridge and had good snow on the ascent but the ridge itself was covered in 6" of unconsolidated snow which required cleaning in the technical bits so we bailed from the ridge as well...down another dodgy slope.
So we thought the snowpack was rubbish basically! Plenty of teams out though, Poachers had 3 or 4 teams on it, Umbrella 2 and Salmon Leap 1 (at least)...and no one seems to have caused a slide.
It may well have consolidated enough by now, or you could retreat down the ice from Poachers pretty easily currently, there was an ice thread at the bottom of the 3rd pitch which would take you to the cave which I think would take you to the ground on 60s. There was plenty of ice and I'm sure you'll be able to find stuff to climb safely.
Heading to the Ben tomorrow instead of back up there, but quite possibly because we can't face the drive a third time in the space of a week from Edinburgh!
