Intro To Winter Lead Climbing
Posted by Max Hunter on 13th March, 2014
Saturday – Snow anchors (CIste)
Sunday – First pitch of Twin Ribs
Last weekend I was over at Glenmore Lodge on an Introduction to Winter Lead Climbing course with Doug and Phil. As normal this season, the weather was not playing the game – Saturday was really windy, and the road was closed up to the Cairngorm Ski resort. We broke the day into workshops, initially looking at avalanche awareness, and the planning stage of winter climbing. We moved onto gear placements on the Glenmore Lodge towers, and then the construction of sound belays, the ABC of stance management and plate orientation. Initially we looked at the use of rope for belays and the management of swinging leads and then the leader keeping the lead. Outside we looked at snow belays, buckets, buried axes and bollards, before back indoors in the last few hours of Saturday we looked at constructing belays with slings, and crag retreat.
On the Sunday, the wind eased off a little, so we headed off to the Twin Ribs to look at multi-pitch climbing and put it all into practice. During the day, I saw and heard an avalanche to the left of the Mess of Pottage. There were already huge car sized blocks sitting on the slope, and by the end of this latest slide there were many more TV sized blocks to join them. It looked like a piece of the corniced edge had fallen off.
After turning the Twin Ribs into a 6 pitch climb, we had managed to put into practice everything from yesterdays workshops. The weather was clearly turning – this was the start of the high pressure that everybody has been enjoying for the bulk of this week.
Avalanche left of Mess of Pottage
Looking at stance management
Good vis into Coire an t-Sneachda
Doug and Phil on the left Twin Rib