After a lazy day visiting coffee shops and borrowing wifi we planned a day climbing and mountaineering in Lochnagar.
Lochnagar (view ranger)
We decided that the conditions were favourable to climb The Black Spout on Lochnagar so headed off to Breamar for the night. Lee, Tom and Nick went off to try and find a bunkhouse in Breamar, while Sarah and I decided to head round to Loch Muick to park up at the start of the route for the night. A short while later the boys all turned having failed to find a reasonable priced bunkhouse. Car camping it was.
The next morning we set off on the long walk in to Lochnagar. Its a very long walk to Lochnagar. After about 2hours of slogging along a 4x4 track we cut cross country to and found ourself at the loch at the bottom of Lochnagar (confusingly both the mountain and the loch are called Lochnagar).
We had to wade through knee deep powder snow to reach the bottom of The Black Spout, once in the Spout however, the snow transformed into bullet hard nevé.
The next morning we set off on the long walk in to Lochnagar. Its a very long walk to Lochnagar. After about 2hours of slogging along a 4x4 track we cut cross country to and found ourself at the loch at the bottom of Lochnagar (confusingly both the mountain and the loch are called Lochnagar).
We had to wade through knee deep powder snow to reach the bottom of The Black Spout, once in the Spout however, the snow transformed into bullet hard nevé.
Towards the top of the route it steepened up and was closer to grade 2 ground than grade 1. It was fantastic! Sarah did extremely well getting up and refused offers of ropes or pre kicked steps. I was very proud.
After topping out of the route we played around building snow anchors before heading up to the summit.
On the summit we were privileged to see a brocken spectre. Our summit time was soon ruined by what seamed to be a whole coach load of walkers appearing out of the mist.