Home | Calendar |::::::

>Home/Skills Articles/Scottish Winter Experience

The Scottish Winter Experience by James Edwards

And so, around it comes again. The season that brings joy to the hearts of those who wait; those for whom December means more than just consumerism and consumption. Winter. Its very name causes many to affect a thousand yard stare and speak in hushed tones of their plans for the coming holy season. For me, the anticipation is always the thing. I love to see the winter online chat rooms go wild as soon as Michael Fish drops the W word into his two minute sermon after the news. What lines will you do? Where will you go? Will Guerdon Grooves ever get repeated?!

But are you ready? These days, winter seems to be becoming more of an ephemeral thing and one where good planning and route choices are important if you want to be successful. But have faith. Just when folk are thinking ‘sod this, I'm off to La Grave' the Ben can give the best ice for a generation and you'll be sitting in a French internet café reading online how your mates have been tag team soloing all the Cold Climbs classics.

And so to preparation… Ideally this should start a few months before the first snows. Long walks and scrambles in the hills will avoid that fitness wake up call of a full on twelve-hour day that some winter lines require. Friends of mine used to tease me that I was wasting my time wandering around the Highlands in the summer and autumn; I should have been ticking off the extremes on the Grit and the Pass instead of rambling about some remote corrie with a digital camera and a pair of binoculars. However, with the arrival of winter the fruits of my labour would be harvested. I would quietly wait for the jigsaw of conditions to be complete and then I would quietly head off to a far-flung crag for a steep adventure. Putting in the groundwork like this always paid off. Would you rather climb the Cuillin ridge in winter or queue with the great unwashed on Left Twin?

There are more weather resources on the Internet now than at ever before. Many years ago we used to say ‘yay' or ‘nay' at the whim of Mr Fish and how generous he was feeling when it came to the distribution of his magnetic stick on snowflakes. My housemates and I would video the forecast and replay it ad nausium. Did that casual wave of the hand across the Highlands mean that the conditions would be good for us winter acolytes? Now there are a plethora of forecasts out there to choose from. However one friend of mine still favours listening to the shipping forecast to work out where to go and what to do. He is invariably correct, but then Andy Nesbit did practically invent the sport of modern Scottish winter mixed climbing! For us mere mortals, learning how to read a weather forecast chart is a worthwhile skill to back up the wealth of packaged forecasts out there. Get to recognise which patterns will bring snow to which part of the country; a northwest wind may cause the West to become a powder fest, whilst the Cairngorms get the freeze with out the dump. Conversely, a northeast wind can plaster Lochnagar in snow but give a low level freeze bringing the Southern Highland turfy lines into good nick. Remember as well that all hope is not lost if your chosen ambition is buried under a category 5 avalanche warning; try climbing on a different aspect.

The Northern Cairngorms can offer climbing on different aspects in close proximity to each other and some cliffs that can be abseiled into if the crag apron is too dangerous to cross (just be sure that you are able to climb out!). Watch the freezing level intently. The conditions that bring superb ice on the thin face routes on the Ben into condition involve cycles of dumps of snow followed by rapid thaws and a speedy refreeze. A week or two of this and you too could join the growing list of those who have romped up those grade VI test pieces wondering what all the fuss is about.

If you want to climb two or more big winter days in a row, you're going to need a level of fitness that a lazy day on the summer crags isn't going to give you. Don't take the car to work, bike it. Think of it as carbon credit Karma for the winter. You'll put more than a few miles on the clock as you chase the winter dragon around the country. Indeed, Yvon Chouinard is convinced his spot in hell will be warmed by the gasses of all the fuel he's burnt in 50 years of climbing. In the gym, pick up a pair of 5 to 10kg dumbbells and simulate swinging axes above your head and clearing snow at arms reach. Do several sets of 50 interspersed with the habitual calf raises and leg presses to simulate those moves when you have to rock up on to a high step. And don't forget your general core strength. This will allow you to find semi rests in the most ridiculous of places. I remember being surprisingly comfortable on a tricky route in Stob Corrie nan Lochain in the Coe and being able to chill out for a few moments by doing the splits onto the sidewalls of a shallow chimney. At the same spot my second couldn't even hang on to take out the gear I'd leisurely placed on the lead and used some choice phrases to describe his predicament as I told him to join a gym. Flexibility is another thing that many winter climbers lack. If you feel that yoga is just one sacrifice that you are not willing to make for the cause, cheat when on the route by using your axe to pick up your foot and place it on that foothold that you just can't reach.

It must be said though that I've seen the fittest climbers go to pieces on winter routes because quite frankly they aren't in the right head space for the game that day. A friend of mine who could climb F8a back in the days when it meant something asked me in the pub over a diet lemonade if I'd take him winter climbing that weekend. Knowing that this guy could crank off one arm'ers in the double figures, I thought that I'd better not mess about and we went straight onto a meaty mixed V. I was worried that he'd find it too easy but at the first belay he told me in no uncertain terms that he was scared out of his wits. Winter climbing is not always ‘fun' in the traditional sense of the word and I'd suggest and you may find the best winter climbers often stand apart from their piers more in terms of their attitude rather than their physique.

My wife once caught me staring at a picture in the old Glen Coe guide. She said I'd been staring at it for an entire episode of Eastenders and was I feeling OK as I looked like I needed to go to the toilet. I started to explain that I was trying to visualise my self on the route drowning in spin drift and getting battered by the wind 20m up from the ground with no runners and having just dropped the rack as hot aches chewed at my hands. She shook her head and looked concerned for a moment but then the theme tune to Casualty started and I was saved from being told to stop mucking around. What I was actually doing was tying to put myself in that worst case scenario and then imagining my thoughts and feelings as I remained in control and then cruised through the crux to the top. When I actually did the route that winter up to then it was the hardest thing that I had attempted but it flowed so well that I climbed past the first belay and greedily gobbled up the next pitch as well. I remember feeling elated as I watched the snow tumble from my stance and fall straight to the floor without touching the cliff. But I also remember relaxing a wee bit too much, as when I seconded the next easier section, I fell off twice. I had stupidly thought ‘well that's game over for me today then'. A big mistake, as I wasn't even ‘half way there' as the saying goes.