Central Crack Route 08/12/2009

After heading back to Edinburgh last night I was back in the car this morning to head to the Northern Corries. I was out with Greg again and we headed into Coire an Lochain to climb Central Crack Route. Again there were high winds but we got a lot of shelter once in the corie. After some sketchy traversing we started up the technical first moves of the route, this gave two hard moves before a good rest was obtained, followed by further good climbing. Greg ran the first two pitches together and then I continued up to belay below The Crack which Greg fancied wrestling with. After some gnarly lay-backing Greg was almost in a niche providing a rest and some welcome gear (the rest of the crack was full of crud snow or bulletproof ice) but actually found himself lying in deep powder snow back at the belay! After this we headed up into the fierce wind and traversed round the cories to walk into Coire Cas. The weather was much clearer today, and the cories looked stunning as the sun set behind the torrents of powder snow scouring across the plateau. A great day to be out in the mountains and another great route.