A bluebird day, with some high altitude lenticular clouds later in the day.
I took a companion Liam out with me for the day, a young enthusiastic guy who`s got the serious bug for being on the Scottish hills and wants to climb everything now.
We headed from the glencoe road up into coire nan lochan, I remember this being a not particularly nice ascent, however clearly I`m fitter now as it didn`t feel so bad.
We needed to crampon up two thirds of the way up, as some very hard unavoidable ice and snow was still banking out the footpath. Once up under stob coire nan lochan, there were areas of soft knee, sometimes thigh deep snow to sink into, however on the whole its was good neve conditions.
We decided to solo up the grade 1 Broad gully, which was steeply banked out and rock solid. Liams first experience of mega calf burn!
The rocky scree path up to the top of scnl had a few patches of hard snow, but leaving the summit towards bidean was a fine arête of snow. Fairly huge cornices overhung the eastern side.
Bidean nan bian was munro 200 for me so much time was spent taking in the view and having a little celebration, included me falling off the cairn in my giddiness!!
the views out to the isles was incredible and perhaps the most stunning Ive ever seen. Being only 1330 we decided to continue to stob coire sgreamhach, although I was a little nervous knowing that the descent route off the head wall into the hidden valley could be impassable due to cornices.
I wasn`t wrong, although there were footprints down through the huge cornices, they were sagging in the sunshine pretty badly and I had no particular interest in dropping down through them. There was plenty of avalanche debris from all around the coire rim.
Therefore we continued along the ridge towards Ben Fhada, Which in itself turned out to be interesting.
We encountered the ``bad step`` and took a long downclimb in very unstable soft snow, far too steeply for my liking, and pooped back up onto the ridge at the bealach under the bad step. It is from here that we descended down into the coire below, on good bomber ice and snow, needing to kick and use both axes to downclimb safely.
crossing lots of avalanche debris was unnerving yet, we were soon onto the path leading to the bottom of the hidden valley.
We arrived back at the car some 9 hours after leaving it, but not tired. A really excellent day out.
Area :
Glencoe South (Loch Linnhe To Loch Etive)
The southern side of Glen Coe includes some very well-known mountains and can be split into two groups; the ones you can see from the A82 and the ones you can’t. Included in the former group is Buachaille Etive Mor, Buachaille Etive Beag, the Three Sisters and the Ballachulish Horseshoe, and in the latter, three Munros between Glen Creran and Glen Etive (Sgor na h-Ulaidh, Beinn Fhionnlaidh and Beinn Sgulaird). With huge amounts of climbing and walking in summer and winter, this area is also home to a large cairn built for Queen Victoria, or so the story goes. Includes all major peaks above 600m.
