A painfully early start today, my alarm went off at 6am! I put myself through the normal morning routine, kettle, coffee, cloths, food, drive, and met James at Bank Street Lodge. We headed over to Aonach Mor Ski centre and got on the gondola at 8am Sharp.

We looked out of the top station., snow blowing heavily, a very Scottish start. We put on our goggles, peered into the whiteness in front of us made our way west to the viewpoint, then slightly south to drop off the South side of Aonach Mor. Several hours of walking later got us to the valley below Golden Oldie. I can't explain the drudgery of walking through a Scottish snow shower for hours on end. Plodding along a seemingly endless valley towards a vague start point of a classic winter test-piece climb. 

Sam had given us some words of advice, they went something along the line of "its a long route that often catches people out, take two 60m ropes so that you can escape the route if you need to and a full climbing rack". At the bottom of the rib of rock we geared up. The starting ground looked fairy easy so rather than tying into the ropes James shoved his in his bag and I threw mine over my shoulders and dangled it down the sides of my bag. The plan was to rope up when the ground became more tricky. 

We climbed up. It got steeper, but not difficult. We climbed onto a slab, the course was strait up, but the middle looked awkward but it went. A few tricky big steps saw us on to the platform above the rock. A few more moves and we were on a narrow ridge. A few more moves and we were off it. We carried on up some easy ground expecting the difficulties to begin at any moment. 

To our shock we found ourselves on the summit plateau of Aonach Mor! Apparently we had just soloed up the whole route! We turned East and headed back through the blizzard towards the gondola. We walked on a bearing to find the top of the ski centre and found ourselves back at the gondola station just as they were announcing the last lift down due to bad weather.

Well I have an apology and a confession to make.

I will start with the apology. I have been a little slow on the blog posts lately. Ok I have been slacking by about 9 months.

Things all got a little tricky this year. The Internet was slow/non existant in Scotland so I managed to slip out of the habit of writing this little blog about my travels, trips, adventures, and snow conditions. 

I will try and recap what I have been up to over the next few weeks. 

There have been exciting trips to Wales, Scotland, The Lakes, The Peaks and of course the Alps. Yes I have been busy this year.

Which leads me nicely on to my confession.

I must confess that I no longer live in the UK. In fact I have moved to Switzerland. I have given up my nomadic lifestyle and taken a real 5 day a week job with a School. 

It was when an old University friend asked me if I was free to work this weekend that I realised I had been a little quite about my move. 

​Sorry Folks! 

Anyway here are some photos to make up! 

Well, not much to say about today, but a few learning points.

The avalanche risk was high, there had been a lot of fresh snow. I decided to be clever. Lizzy had joined James and I for a winter climb. The classic east ridge of Bein a'Choraim looked like it might go despite the awful weather warnings. 

We parked up in the lay by and stepped out of the BBV into over a foot of snow. (This should have been the first sign of disaster). It was a late start, but the walk starts on a track through the forrest and it was a blue sky day, perfect. We wound our way through trees that were heavy laden with snow commenting on the picturesqueness of the woods. We came to the river, we managed a possibly dodgy river crossing, and scrambled up the bank onto the Land Rover track that was to be our "motorway of a path" through the rest of the woods to the open hillside behind and our ridge line.

To our dismay we found the track was full of snow. Knee to waste deep powder snow! We broke trail for 3h 30min! Taking it in turn we would smash a trench through the snow until we were shattered, then drop to the back and let some one else take a go. 

At 2:15pm we were finally out of the woods! We got a brief glimpse of our ridge line, plastered with snow, no, loaded with snow, before the cloud swirled round us and hid the ridge from view. Our hearts sank as our weather window vanished before our eyes. With good weather we could have risked the dodgy terrain and snow, as we would have been able to look at what was above us and decide on our safety. With ought the visibility the risk was unjustifiable. 

Our hearts heavy, our bodies tired, we turned around and retraced our steps. It took us another soul destroying 2h 45min to plod back to the van. It was a slow torturous days walking. The company was good though. We had a dismal coffee in a pub just down the road before parting ways with Lizzy.