A white room visit and some climbing up north

Just back in from an excursion with Isi, again intended to go for a single night and ended up of course staying for the next one as well, and very nearly a third but I got the guilt and had to come home - a shame really as I was just getting into the swing of things again!

Summit Cairn...haha

Started out by trying my best to get to Drumochter Pass munro lay-by for 930am, which ended up being 10:10am, annoying because the only reason that happened was a long excursion into Perth for fuel on the journey there so I turned up a bit flustered from the drive. We set out not long after I arrived, and we trudged up the hillside, not far at all really as I always forget how high the Drumochter Pass actually is! Was only about 500m ascent I think! However, it was breezy at the car and a whiteout on the top, we noticed lots of wind deposited snow and things on the way up and it was blowing an absolute gale as well - we decided to go down for tea and medals instead of doing the whole thing, the original plan being four munros! 

We felt as well on the way up that we were walking a bit close to a cornice/edge at some points which was  sketchy considering recent events so that wigged me a bit, but we followed our footprints on the way back down so it was fine. Anyway, we went off to the mountain cafe and decided to press on to Gairloch considering the weather forecast. 

Isi on bolts!

As we were on the way there, we passed the LAMM car park and discovered a hotel in Dundonnell, so decided to camp up for the night. In the pub we ran into a music festival for the pub opening for the summer so that was nice, a nice pint and good music for the evening whilst perusing guidebooks, not bad at all. Next morning we went of merrily to the Gairloch crags which were awesome. Remind me not to climb on the Pot Hole Route though, we managed to put the rope down in a tick nest and poor Isi was down there dealing with lots of ticks while I was climbing..! I felt so bad! All in all a productive day, my first 4 leads of the season, and same for Isi as well :) 

From Clown Slab lay-by

Jetty Crag

The road back to Dundonnell...

Sunday we decided to go back to Jetty crag to have a look, but ran away bravely when it was pretty wet on the doable bits - ended up heading for the furthest away Gairloch crags - headed for the Apron, it was raining on the walk in but we persevered, and I climbed a diff in the wet after we took our time getting in because it was wet, with a dry 'enough' looking rock face, we started Gneiss and Smashy, but it began raining again when I was on it and actually made a Diff interesting, took ages setting up the belay and the rope drag was a nightmare so poor Isi was once again climbing with occasionally see loops in the rope as I literally couldn't feel if she was there or not, despite hauling on the blooming thing! It was fine, we bailed again as the rain was coming in, for tea and medals in the tea place in Gairloch. Where we found the weather was such better and once we'd dried out, we went for some sport routes at Clown Slab, and I learnt how to use a beta stick. We did grade 4-6, grade 4 was enough for me, Isi did the 5 and the 6, and I got up both of them clean but the 6 was really hard, but really fun!! 

After that, I drove back home, although I did seriously debate doing another day :P! Was a long haul back, but the drive on the south side of that peninsula was actually brilliant, going past Beinn Eight etc in the sunset. Back to reality I guess ....