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Lots Of Activity On The Ben

Posted by Max Hunter on 30th December, 2013

The activity was last nights snow movements rather than crowds of people. I only spotted 3 climbing teams, 1 winter skills team, and a few people out for a walk/recce.

Today I was out with Claire on the second day of her winter climbing holiday. The SAIS forecast for today showed a great deal of cause for caution, a high avalanche risk, and in addition the possibility of strong winds during the day. At the start of the walk in to the Ben, I thought we could get lucky – the rain had already stopped and there wasn’t a breath of wind. On the walk I was wondering what to finally decide on for a climb – when I saw a team on Castle Ridge. They were moving together at one point, and I wondered if it was because the plastered rocks made it hard to win gear or belays. The sticky slush snow from 2 days ago was still plastered all over the cliffs – so I new it would be a day for digging. I had some good beta that a team had climbed Jubilee climb, but their blog talked about waist deep wading – which put me off (am I lazy!). I took a look at the approach to the SW ridge of the Douglas Boulder and it looked like it might go. Claire had done Fawlty Towers with me before, but never the Douglas Boulder Ridge. The walk up to the first belay was pretty good (I only sank up to my knee in snow twice), the snow was much firmer than yesterday. However there had been a freezing level above the summits last night and heavy rain – and there was avalanche debris in lots of places. Number 5 gully has a huge fan of debris. There was debris from somewhere up near number 2 gully finishing in the W gulch. There was debris just above the E gulch from somewhere. There was a huge amount of debris coming out of Observatory gully and the snow slope up towards Zero. Most slopes were littered with large numbers of sunwheels (ironically released last night without the sun).

We got onto the Douglas ridge and completed the first pitch with much more digging than I’ve ever done before. After winning the next belay we decided to ab off and go for the W gully up to the Douglas Gap. Down the other side and into the very bottom of Observatory. The snow always felt secure and stable, however the temperatures were warm and there was a lot of dripping about. At the end of the day, there had been no wind or rain. I’ve never seen so much snow on the Ben – it the W gully I was able to use belays that I’ve never been able to reach before, due to the depth of the snowpack!

A great day, and it was good to get something done.