After Thursday's near perfect weather today was a bit of a contrast! I headed for the Ben again with Nick with the intention of doing a nice easy route to introduce Nick to the world of roped winter climbing, sadly the weather had other plans! The walk in was damp, windy and cold, and thing didn't get any better higher up!
Once in the corie its self we headed for No. 2 gully, unfortunately there had been a considerable amount more fresh snow than expected and the snow pack didn't feel too stable. A quick excavation near the base of the gully revealed about an inch of fresh windslab sitting on about 6 inches of firmer crust which didn't appear to be attached to anything at all! In fact the entire slab (about 7 inches thick) fell away before i had even finished digging! Not very confidence inspiring at all!
We had a quick look for Raeburns Easy Route but with very poor visibility, an unstable snowpack, worsening weather conditions and numerous powder avalanches pouring down from above we decided to cut out losses and made a quick retreat!
On the way back we ran into numerous other teams who were all doing exactly the same as ourselves.
So as to not completely waste the day i took Nick back to the same small ice pitch i had played around on on Thursday and we looked at the basics of climbing technique, axe/ foot placements etc. The weather lower down was much more settled and it turned into a pleasant, sociable afternoon when we were joined by Ross and Emma (fresh back from the MCOS Norway ice trip!) who we had discussed conditions with around No.2.
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