In reply to ijsbeer:
It is important to know just how weather and conditions dependent Scottish Winter climbing is. Obviously all mountains and mountain routes are influenced by the weather but you will be amazed by the extent to which this is true in Scotland. When it is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad (which is most of the time!), it can be horrid. But horrid or not, British Winter climbers will still go out - Winter climbing in bad (but hopefully not too dangerous), conditions is normal for the UK.
When you climb in Scotland, it is the full mountain experience that you tend to look for - where you walk up 1000 vertical m for 2.5 pitches of slush, it has to be. It is seldom like continental roadside ice, not least because most of the time, the wind is tearing at you continually. The power and ferocity of the wind in Scotland can be stunning.
Navigation, normally without the benefit of visibility, is critical, on the other hand there are no glaciers with crevasses to fall in or seracs to wander over. GPS may well help with this, others can inform you better about that than me, but having a clear sense of the terrain from the map before you start is very important - just holding a map in a Cairngorm blizzard is a serious challenge, let alone trying to read it.
With regard to routes, Alpine PD will probably equate in technicality to one of the easier ridge traverses in Scotland, say Castle ridge on Ben Nevis or the Carn Mor Dearg arette on the same mountain. I would say that the very popular Aonach Eagach in Glencoe is probably harder, more like alpine AD. You will also need to remember that there is very little fixed gear in UK Winter routes, so you will need to carry and know how to use things like slings, nuts and other self-placed and self-removed protection. Ice screws will sometimes be useful, but a lot less than you might think, UK climbers always tend to preferentially use rock gear if they can, as the ice is seldom good enough to hold a dependable screw.
Finally, as others have hinted, do not become too obsessed with Ben Nevis. I once spent a Winter climbing with a Spaniard, coming from Edinburgh, we had an excellent season but the one time we went to Ben Nevis, he met a group of 4 Spaniards on the summit. They were loudly denouncing (in voluble Spanish), Scottish Winter climbing as being a hoax and a fraud, because they had only heard of Nevis and had tried to climb there in totally unsuitable conditions. Nothing he could say about our excellent Winter could convince them, but we had picked where and when to go very carefully, considering different weather across the areas and aspects.
Conditions can vary an astonishing amount across the fairly small horizontal interval between Western and Eastern Scotland, so the Cairngorms or Creag Meagaidh can be excellent while Glencoe or Ben Nevis can be dripping. On the other hand, the East is notorious for its violent tempests. Unfortunately you have to accept that Scotland can be superb one week (or even day!), and dreadful the next. So if you pick a week, you may get lucky and rave about it forever, or you may vow never to be seen darkening Scottish shores ever again.
