Thursday 4 February 2010

More Scottish Fun

I'm back in Wales now after another awesome week up in Scotland. The highlight of the week was an ascent of the Forcan Ridge on the Saddle. This is a fantastic grade I/II winter scramble with a short abseil to pass a tricky step at half way. We had fine weather and good snow from the base of the ridge. Photos below:







Unfortunately the weather turned bad the next day so that put on hold plans for the classic 'five sisters of kintail'. The lowlight of the week was having to wake up at 3am to dig out our snowhole entrance to prevent asphyxiation in a snowy grave!

I got the train back from Fort William, which turned out to be an excellent choice - as well as being environmentally friendly the section between Fort William and Glasgow has to be one of the most scenic journeys in the world. I was blessed with fine weather, blue skies and snow down to 100m. The views across Rannoch Mor were breath taking.

All this time spent in Scotland recently has got me thinking about Munro bagging. For those that don't know a Munro is essentially a Scottish peak over 3000ft. There are 284 of them and many a mountaineer has a desire to 'bag' them all. This has always seemed pretty geeky to me - the whole idea of climbing a mountain just to it tick off the list has never really appealed to me, especially as there are many amazing mountains below 3000ft. However having climbed a fair few now I am starting to harbour a small ambition of doing them all over my life time. What really appeals to me is that many of the Munros are very remote and require an expedition mentality to climb - walking into a bothy or wild camping is required for some, others are best accessed by boat and they will all take you to some amazing mountain environments.