The Scottish Winter International meet went with a splosh. It was wet. And warm. However, the troops went out everyday, finding some climbable conditions and generally having a great time.

Hosts came from all over the UK to show off our finest routes to a group of the world's keenest winter climbers.

Team Petzl nipped over from France to shoot a film featuring Ueli Steck, American Super-Alpinists teamed up with Ian Parnell and went... (wait for it)... rock climbing at Dunkeld! (They did get some winter routes done too). Slovenian mixed masters tore it up at Newtyle dry tooling quarry, Japanese Giri Giri boys came, saw and described Scotland as “WET”. Everyone got well and truly drunk too. Especially the Czechs.

Typically the conditions came good the day after the meet, but luckily some of the visitors stayed on and sampled Ben Nevis in its full winter garb.

Scottish winter climbing. It's brilliant.

The BMC organises an International Climbing Meet every year, alternating between a rock climbing meet at Plas y Brenin and a winter climbing meet at Glenmore Lodge. Around thirty five guests are teamed up with a British partner of similar ability and sent out on minibuses to find adventure wherever they can.

The meets do attract lots of top climbers, making for some exciting headlines, but behind the media curtain of super hard ascents, the vast majority of hosts and guests just get out there and climb loads, all week long, and have a great time.

These meets are a great way to share world climbing information, watch slide-shows, catch up with old friends, make new friends, get inspired and generally put out the good word for British climbing. I think they are a vital part of what the BMC does.

If you're interested in hosting in either summer or winter, there is more information here: BMC Website.

This last meet was particularly taxing on the hosts, as seeking out routes that were in climbable condition was somewhat tricky, and a rugby-scrum style race ensued most mornings as teams headed up the Ben for the very highest ice routes.

UK host and top mountain guide Stu McAleese was just about to head off climbing when he glanced back at the minibus:

“All the doors were left wide open, everyone had jumped out and set off running without looking back – that's how psyched these guys are! I'm sure they almost left the engine running!”

Routes climbed over the week include: The Secret, Sioux Wall, Darth Vader, Babylon, Thompson's Route, Glovers Chimney, Comb Gully, Green Gully, Tower Scoop and Smith's Route, plus of course a new route climbed by Simon 'The Knowledge' Richardson called Big Wednesday.

At the world class dry-tooling venue of Birnham Quarry, routes that were climbed included Fast and Furious, Too Fast Too Furious, Roofilicious, Va Va Vroom, Happy Hooker, Groovilicious and Bonzai.

Lectures and slide-shows came from Zoe Hart (USA), Dave MacLeod (UK), Pavel Vritic (Czech) and Kei Taniguchi & Yusuke Sato (Japan).

The event was organised by Becky McGovern and Nick Colton of the BMC. You can watch Nick hard at work in this exciting video:

---

The event was supported by Rab and DMM.