This trip was a long time in the making. Back in the early '80's when my friend and climbing partner Kai were college students, we had taught ourselves how to ice climb and were budding alpinists. We planned a trip to Scotland to climb. However, around that time I met a girl, fell in love, and the trip was off for me. Kai went alone and had a less than ideal experience, arriving too late in the season to climb any good ice.
Fast forward 35+ years and the trip was on. In preparation, we climbed a bunch of ice, including a three day trip to Ouray. Since we didn't know anything about the climbing in Scotland we hired a guide for a week, and were very glad we did.
When I arrived at the Salt Lake City airport I discovered that my flight to Atlanta was delayed, and it was delayed enough that I would miss my connection to London. I chatted with the gate agent about my options. She said she could put me on standby for an earlier flight to Atlanta, but that wasn't all that comforting as the flight was full. I walked over to the new gate and chatted with the agent there, and she offered to put me on a direct flight to Paris, with a 2 hour layover, then a connection to London. Sounded good to me. She assured me they would get my luggage (one huge rolling duffel with all my climbing gear) on the Paris flight. I walked over to the new gate and immediately boarded. (It was very fortunate that I had arrived at the airport 3 hours early or I would have missed everything). The flight to Paris was delayed because of the weather. It took about 1.5 hours to clear the snow and ice from the plane before taking off. This meant we were late getting to Paris. Once we landed, we taxied out to some remote location, they then bussed us to the terminal, where I had to check in for my connection and get a new boarding pass. I had 30 minutes to make my connecting flight. I ran around the corner only to discover that I had to go through security again and there was a huge line. I thought I would never make it. Fortunately the line went pretty fast, but after going through security my laptop was missing. I spotted a French woman holding it, kindly asked her about it and sure enough it was mine. I then literally ran to my gate arriving 5 minutes before take off. I couldn't find my passport. I tore through my bag and finally found it, then couldn't find my boarding pass. Total nightmare. They printed me a new one and I finally boarded, sweaty and disheveled. All this travel blabbering is lead in to what happened next. I arrived in London and my bag is not there; it's in Atlanta. I was not totally surprised, but quite disappointed. Hard to climb with no gear. I filled out the paperwork and they assured me they would have it delivered to my hotel up in Northern Scotland. Ugh. I was pretty stressed.
I jumped on the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station, then took a taxi to where my friend Kai was staying (he arrived a day earlier). We had a pleasant few hours in London checking out the Victorian art at Tate Britain, eating delicious fish and chips and walking around Hyde Park.
We retrieved our luggage, walked a short distance to Euston Train Station and boarded the Caledonian Sleeper train for Scotland. The berths were quite small and cramped but comfortable. We slept most of the 11 hours ride to the small Highlands town of Newtonmore where our guide, Graeme Ettle, picked us up at the train station. Newtonmore is a small village of about 1000 people up in the northern Highlands. Graeme took us to his house, cooked us breakfast, and we got acquainted. Since we couldn't check into our hotel until about 3:00, we went with Graeme to the local Shinty match. Shinty is an old Highlands sport similar to field hockey but quite a bit rougher. We watched a match, ate some homemade pork pies and strawberry and cream scones, then headed to our hotel across town to check in and get settled. We were scheduled to begin climbing on Monday.
Newtonmore
My missing climbing gear was weighing heavily on me. Graeme has assured me that if it didn't show up, he hds plenty of gear he could loan me. But his feet were way smaller than mine. When we were at his house, he called a friend who came over with a bigger pair of boots. They were still too small but would do for Monday I suppose. On Sunday I called the airlines and they had "found" my luggage. It was sent to Paris, then back to London. They tell me that the bag is going on a flight to Amsterdam then on the Inverness and from there will be delivered to me by a courier service. Stressfull.
In the meantime I have a pile of borrowed gear from Graeme, harness, belay device, boots, crampons, helmet, baselayers, ice tools. It's not ideal, but better than not climbing. I was envisioning me sitting around the hotel room sad and lonely while Kai is off climbing. I'm truly grateful I have this borrowed gear, and that Graeme and I are about the same size. He picks us up at 6:00 am for the 45 minute drive up to the small ski resort at Cairngorm Mountain. We plan to do a typical Scottish gulley climb.
From a distance the Cairngorms don't look like much, big rounded hills. But what you don't see from afar are steep cliff faces everywhere in the coires (corries) which are bowl shaped cliff areas cut out from the rounded hills. They are quite impressive when you are standing below them. We are in an area called the Northern Coires area in Cairngorms National Park. We are headed up to Coire An T-Sneachda and the Fiacaill Buttress to climb the Fiacaill Gully, a grade II/III gully. Conditions are unseasonably warm and conditions are lean, meaning there isn't a lot of ice up there. That makes the climbing a bit harder.
The approach was about an hour and a half of uphill hiking, partly on stone paths and trails. High up it was just hiking through rocky snowy areas up to the base of the steep snow that leads up to the cliffs.
This first day is to get us out on a moderate climb so the guide can get a better sense of our experience and abilities. When the snow pitched up to about 35 degrees he pulled out the rope, ran up to a rocky section, then brought us up, not really on a belay, but did have the rope between us. The snow was firm neve, quite hard in places, and up to about 40-45 degrees. That may not sound very steep, but when it is super hard, it makes it more serious. You can't fall on terrain like this.
Steeper than it looks here.
We then kicked steps up the steep slope to the base of the climb.
Looking down the steep snow slope. Easy climbing but slipping and falling is not acceptable.
Graeme gears up and heads off up the gully. We find the climbing moderate and very enjoyable. It's a clear day, blue skies, no wind. We are reminded several times during the day that this is NOT typical Scottish winter climbing weather.
The climbing alternates between hard neve snow, rock, frozen turf, and a little ice.
Unknown climber on a different route across the coire.
Typical belay anchors.
Looking across to the other side of Coire An T-Sneachda from near the top of our climb.
Kai topping out.
After several hours of climbing, and 5 pitches, we top out. The climbing was moderate, interesting (for us), and very enjoyable. The mixed climbing was very different than the dry tooling that we have in the American West, where you are delicately hooking rock. In Scotland, the rock is often coated in rime ice, and there are all kinds of cracks, ledges, flat spots with either ice or frozen turf that you can wack a tool into. Frozen turf was something we had never experienced before. Sometimes it is really hard, like rock hard and you have to swing your tool quite hard to get a placement; other times it is softer like very hard snow and takes a placement well. It didn't seem sketchy at all. This is exactly the kind of experience we were hoping for. This was the perfect first day of climbing.
I was really grateful to be able to climb on borrowed equipment. The boots were too small and my feet were aching by the time we got back to the car, and I even slightly bruised a couple toes, but it was all fine. When we got down to the car park in mid afternoon, I called the airport again and learned that my bag had arrived in Inverness (about an hour drive from Newtonmore). I was elated and really hoping it would arrive that night.
We were pretty tired from our efforts and decided that Tuesday would be a rest day; hopefully my luggage would arrive because we were planning a big long day on Ben Nevis on Wednesday.
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