I’m back in Scotland this week for my final induction day with the British Mountain Guides. The idea was to come over a few days early from Chamonix to get a couple of days climbing in before the induction day. Unfortunately the weather had a different idea and the massive quantities of snow Scotland is experiencing at the moment have resulted in zero climbing so far. Yesterday Ross and I headed out to check out a few low lying venues around Ballater with the mountains been a definite no go.
The first venue didn’t have the potential ice Ross thought might be there so we relocated to Pannanich Crag where some friends had done a winter ascent a few years ago. I say we relocated to the crag but this isn’t strictly true, maybe a more accurate description would be we ‘relocated to the forest near the crag’ as after 2.5 hours of wallowing around in waist deep snow we didn’t manage to find the crag, meant to be only 15 minutes from the road! Who knows, maybe we just walked straight over a buried Pannanich Crag?
The only climbing we did all day
Ross ploughing a trench through the forest, yes it is Scotland honest!
