A couple of weekends ago a blog post on the Skye Guides website (http://skyeguides.tumblr.com/), showed stunning pictures of the Cuillin Ridge (the holy grail of uk winter mountaineering) in mint condition. This caused great excitement on Goodman Street and bags were packed with bivvi kit and stoves and Ainsley cous-cous. Plans were made for the all-night driving epic. All that was needed was the weather, visibility being high on our list of priorities. The forecast was not looking primo, but we decided we might be lucky and would leave it to the last possible minute to give the forecast a chance for improvement.
By the time we reached Glasgow however, the met office was conspiring against us, the updated forecast read something like 'Weather everywhere will be glorious, except the weather on Skye which will be shite'. Based on this unambiguous information we accepted our dreams of aquiring the holy grail had been shattered and ate a packet of jelly babies to quell the disappointment.
The sat nav was reprogrammed to Glencoe (incidentally, home of the Gorge of Eternal Peril as featured in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). The damp, dark and chilly morning dawned and we ended up soaking as we trudged up to Stob Coire an Lochain, being hit with big wet snowflakes. The conditions were very wintery, with alot of ice in the cracks and a uniform covering of verglass and hoar and mounds of powder on any ledges. Rob decided on Central Grooves, a classic VII/7 and made pretty short work of the initial tricky section, but then came to a halt looking for runners which were not in abundant supply. The runner situation did not resolve itself, I unclipped from my belay with the idea that perhaps I could heroically throw myself down the approach slope and prevent rob hitting the bottom (after standing on a really cold belay for a while I end up with lots of strange ideas...). Luckily that was not required and he arrived at the belay relieved. I followed and found the initial section savage but overcame it with a bit of swearing and trying harder.
The next day I woke up with a terrible headache and I remained thouroughly grumpy all of the walk in, despite the glorious morning. It was my turn for a route and I decided to have a second go at Crest Route V/6, which I had tried a few years previously, but had been defeated by a savage crack on the second pitch. I swam (boderline drowning) up the first pitch and arrived at the stance below the crack. I was hoping I had missed something obvious first time round, but it looked exactly as I remembered. I got one axe fully wedged at the back of the crack and used it as a sort of arm bar and then reached around for hooks and wiggled some gear in. The complete absence of footholds means really fighting witn your arms for every move and I repeatedly went up and down and dropped my nuts down the previous pitch and went down and came back up and tried again etc etc. But time was passing and eventually i had to admit defeat for the second time and hand the ropes over to the better climber. Rob made it look a whole lot easier and it was frustrating to think that maybe I had't tried hard enough or been committed enough. Crest Route 2 - Helena 0.
I was pretty disappointed with myself for not managing it and I wonder what exactly i need to improve. Certainly some more pull-ups would not go amiss, I am notoriously poor at pull-ups and the crack was a very physical bit of climbing. Then also, perhaps I wasn't motivated enough, perhaps there was the motivational stumbling block of knowing I was with someone technically better, I could just second it and the I wouldn't have to deal with the stress instead of properly rising to the challenge?
Anyway, we got to the top, and avoided all the cornices along the rim of the coire collapsing in the rising temperatures on the way down. It was then time for the long pizza fuelled drive back to reality.
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