Central Crack Route, Coire an Lochain
*beep beep beep beep beep beep* goes the sound of the alarm. Its 4am on Saturday 14th January, off to go climbing.
We got ready (Keith actually woke up on time) and headed up to Cairngorm car park and began our walk in to Coire an Lochain for sunrise with a forecast of clear high pressured weather.
The walk in took us nearly 2 hours (a mixture of the lack of fitness and the super icy paths), but we eventually made it to the bottom of No.2 Buttress.
After gearing up Keith got started on the first pitch of Central Crack Route (IV 5 **), using his awesome thrutching and thugging technique, and lets not forget his amazing footwork. After 1.5 hours of me freeeezing, he finally made it to the first belay.
Upon seconding I got stuck in the chinmey bit with my rucksack. Interesting, but managed to thug up it Keithy style! woop. Keith took the direct approach (after looking at the topo we think the route may have veered slightly right onto easier ground but cannot see why), so it was quite sustained. The conditions were lean, so felt quite spicy for the grade (according to Keith as its my first proper tech 5 (The Seam doesn't count as it's soft)).
I reached the belay and we swapped over leads, and I went across to lead my super rope draggy zigzaggy pitch. Crux of this pitch was probably the start. Being the midget that I am I had to get a super high foot to be able to pull over the bulge. The rest was generally pretty easy though, probably at most tech 4. The drag had got so bad 6-7metres from topping out and I saw an awesome thread so decided to belay from there as I was literlly being pulled down by my ropes. This also meant Keith could belay me on the last 5 metres and get some awesome photos.
I topped out around 4pm and got to make my first snow belay (not that there was much snow on the plateau)!
We then descended Fiaciall Ridge as the sun was setting for the second route tick of the day. Seems theres quite a hard wee downclimb on it when fully laden.
Awesome day, awesome weather, awesome conditions, followed by my regular post winter climbing hot chocolate in Cafe Mambo, where we bumped into Mr Boswell after him beasting it up The Gathering: http://gregboswell.co.uk/
Janey and Keith
We got ready (Keith actually woke up on time) and headed up to Cairngorm car park and began our walk in to Coire an Lochain for sunrise with a forecast of clear high pressured weather.
 |
| moon set |
The walk in took us nearly 2 hours (a mixture of the lack of fitness and the super icy paths), but we eventually made it to the bottom of No.2 Buttress.
After gearing up Keith got started on the first pitch of Central Crack Route (IV 5 **), using his awesome thrutching and thugging technique, and lets not forget his amazing footwork. After 1.5 hours of me freeeezing, he finally made it to the first belay.
 |
| Keith at the cruxy start |
Upon seconding I got stuck in the chinmey bit with my rucksack. Interesting, but managed to thug up it Keithy style! woop. Keith took the direct approach (after looking at the topo we think the route may have veered slightly right onto easier ground but cannot see why), so it was quite sustained. The conditions were lean, so felt quite spicy for the grade (according to Keith as its my first proper tech 5 (The Seam doesn't count as it's soft)).
I reached the belay and we swapped over leads, and I went across to lead my super rope draggy zigzaggy pitch. Crux of this pitch was probably the start. Being the midget that I am I had to get a super high foot to be able to pull over the bulge. The rest was generally pretty easy though, probably at most tech 4. The drag had got so bad 6-7metres from topping out and I saw an awesome thread so decided to belay from there as I was literlly being pulled down by my ropes. This also meant Keith could belay me on the last 5 metres and get some awesome photos.
 |
| topping out |
We then descended Fiaciall Ridge as the sun was setting for the second route tick of the day. Seems theres quite a hard wee downclimb on it when fully laden.
Awesome day, awesome weather, awesome conditions, followed by my regular post winter climbing hot chocolate in Cafe Mambo, where we bumped into Mr Boswell after him beasting it up The Gathering: http://gregboswell.co.uk/
Janey and Keith
posted by Janey @ 17:21
0 Comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home