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.