By Mike Hams - March 2005
Saturday we arrived mid-afternoon to glorious clear sky and a lot of white stuff covering the tops from about 400m upwards. Much excitement from the assembled throng (six stalwarts from East Anglia), muttering of if this holds out we'll get a grade III done by the end of the trip! Cars were collected and after a minor faff in the car park it was off to Aviemore for shopping, essential beer and food supplies only. The decision of us all was that we would cook communally and all vegetarian to make things easy. The snow continued to fall well into the evening it was looking good.
Sunday the crack(ed)-team was in position for the avalanche course by 8:40am! A miracle of communal cooking and minimal gear faffing (walking gear only). Unfortunately the snow that fell the previous evening was thawing quickly and the hills were more brown than white. A slight disadvantage when you want to learn about avalanche behaviour of snow. There were a lot of different snow types to learn about. It also behaves in strange ways once it's on the ground depending on air temperature and wind speed. A morning of theory passed quickly and then we had a play with the avalanche transceivers. Hide and seek in the snow with the instruction to make sure the hidden box was set to transmit before we hid it! .
After a quick bite to eat we were off up to Coire Cas for some practice in snow spotting. We bimbled (instructors technical term) up to just below the Firchaille where there was a healthy deposit of wind blown snow (2m+ of depth!) to look at the layering effects and to conduct some walking rutsche block tests etc. We pretty much trashed the top surface of the snow bank with our pits and block testing. As we set off back to the car park it was beginning to get breezy. (This mountaineer, a notably lightweight fellow, was being blown along in the gusts). Lower down the rain was also present and our great winter weather was changing to storm.
It was during the evening that a terrible accident befell the author. The cheap tin-opener/bottle opener slipped whilst opening a bottle of Timothy Taylor's finest and an index finger sustained a deep cut to the second knuckle. Blood and lots of it flowed, plaster 1 soaked through instantly, plaster 2 stopped the bleeding by dint of being waterproof. This was at 7pm. After dinner and washing-up we adjourned for some gear packing and fettling expecting to find some boney gullies to go at in the morning. At this time the blood started to flow again (10pm) so a trip to casualty was in order for patching. The Raigmore is a very nice hospital but it is in Inverness! Jim volunteered to drive in the driving rain and howling gale and after a quick clean and patch with steri-strips and tubi-grip I was back in bed by 2am. The lovely nurses instructions were to keep it dry for 2 days and then remove the dressing. B*gger, that's floundering in snow out then and I'll need some mittens.
Monday: Team A went for a walk around the Ryovan Bothy and back to Glenmore via the 800m hill behind the bothy. A sound choice as Team B went up to Coire an Sneach'tda and got nothing done, prevented by the wind. Monday evening with the weather worsening we decided on Kinlochleven because we're weather forecast suggested 90mph winds on the tops and no freezing below 5000 feet. With a Dachstein Mitt on the bad finger I managed a couple of climbs before the constant knuckle impacts sent me back to the camera to stop the wound opening again. Jim went for a walk back to Fort William along the West Highland way, where we collected him at 4pm (22km+ in a shade over 5 hours).
Wednesday we went back to the Ice Factor admiring all the fine work that nature had carried out since the previous day. The path along the loch outside Fort William had been washed out and there was beach all over the road in low-lying spots! We hadn't booked for Wednesday and this was a mistake as Plas y Brenin had got the first 4 hours of the day sewn up. We had to wait for another party to finish after them so some weary people left Kinlochleven at 7pm that evening. Jim and John climbed themselves silly on an extremely well thought out climbing wall. We had dropped Phil off at the bottom of Ben Nevis where he was going for a walk up with the summit an outside chance given the weather. He summitted in 31/2 hours and was back down in a further 2 hours with pictorial proof. I picked him up from the youth hostel in Glen Nevis at 5pm and we then collected the climbers from the Ice Factor. Dinner was in the Grog and Gruel in Fort William and then a drive home through the driving snow!!
Thursday dawned with the conditions perfect! We weren't unhappy (say it often enough it will be believed). Toys and dummies were thrown from prams at the capricious nature of the weather. Flying from Inverness it is not possible to do anything before catching the plane despite our best planning attempts. Start times of 3am and later were all explored but there was not enough light to do anything before we had to set off from Aviemore. A fine experience and worth it just for the avalanche knowledge alone.
Mike Hams
