headless climbers

Truly magnificent jobbie photo's today.

Which is a real shame since it done today's afternoon cragging no justice whatsoever.

Creag Dubh at its best - empty, no midgies, a bit of sun and stinky goats milling around.  

Completely forgot how amazing the routes are.

Note to self: mustn't leave it so long between visits, after all it is the local crag.

i love climbing

Personally speaking this year's rock climbing has been a washout for lots of reasons.

However, having had 2 days on the East - avoiding the rain and the midgies I can safety say that I had forgotten how good it is, to wobble one's way up a route or two.

Big thumbs up to the Cairngorm Club who seem to be doing something about the erosion at Ballater.

Thankfully, I am a climber once again :)

randomness

Di: "Lets cycle to mums today over the hills"

Derek: "OK"

Di: "And tomorrow we can cycle back again"

Derek: "OK"

So, some 16 hours later having cycled over 170km and over 4000m ascent we arrived back home.

The most interesting thing that happened was looking at the randomness that you spot when cycling along the roads.

I won, by spotting a once loved 'Wham' badge - or maybe it wasn't and was hurtled out the window.

hold onto your hats

It was a bit windy yesterday.

Not quite crawling along on hands and feet but certainly made the day more interesting.

The wild goats outnumbered the people we saw.

And no, unless I am wearing the gimp suit, boots and gloves there is still absolutely no way that I am embracing scottish lochs.

lochain classics

Yesterday, Neill & Di made the short walk into Coire an Lochain.

Di: "Neill, your dibs, what pitch do you want to lead?"

Neill: "All of them" 

So, as Neill danced his way up both Fallout Corner and Savage Slit, Di gained her badge in belaying, seconding and looking longingly at the blazing sunshine about 100m away.

Summer has finally arrived.

garbh choire

Big adventures deserve big blogs and they don't come much bigger than this.

Yesterday Bill & Di made the wee journey into the very remote garbh choire on beinn a'bhuird.

We had a fairly ambitious plan : mitre ridge, cumming-crofton & squareface.

Pitch 1 of mitre ridge was bloomin' horrendous but we both thought that it can only get better so pushed on.  Well, it doesn't - and if I were to ever write a guide book this route would most definitely be getting stripped of any stars.

We both agreed that we weren't interested on cumming-croften (if it was along the same lines of mitre it can wait for a winter ascent) and decided to rock climb (something that had been glaringly lacking so far) squareface.

Most definitely worth the stars ...

ben nevis

Nothing beats sitting outside the CIC hut with a bottle of red, some great company and a rather fine sunset ...

... waking up with no hangover and having the route to yourself...

... and learning something new about an old mountain.

skimo scotland

We are live and updated ...

Fingers, legs and arms crossed for lots of snow and zero wind.

Oh, it's Scotland - who am I trying to kid?