Self reliance is a fundamental principle of mountaineering. By participating we accept this and take responsibility for the decisions we make. These Conditions Reports are intended to help you make good decisions. They do not remove the need for you to make your own judgements when out in the hills.

Monday 17 March 2014


Claire was the lucky winner of the Jottnar prize draw on UKClimbing with the prize of a week of climbing with me. Unfortunately the weather has not been quite what we hoped for but, thankfully, Claire is very open minded and happy to get whatever we can out of the week. The sustained thaw is continuing to wash away snow at quite a rapid rate and ice is falling off the crags. Water ice is quite durable in a thaw but we had snowy ice on the climbs and I'm concerned that we'll loose this quite quickly.

Today Claire and I went in to Coire na Ciste to try to see what is holding on to the snow but the visibility was very poor and all we could hear was continuous rock and ice fall off Tower Ridge west flank and a sizable chunk of cornice falling off from above Creag Coire na Ciste. We retreated to Castle Ridge and had a very enjoyable climb up it on rock with snow patches in between.

Thursday and Friday look colder this week so fingers crossed we'll get some ice to climb then. In the meantime Claire and I will enjoy some great mountaineering days.



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