Scott and I headed up to Creag Meagaidh on Sunday after hearing good reports about the ice conditions there. After an early start we walked up into a temperature inversion and some drizzle, this soon died off however and there was fat blue ice evident on the face so we knew we could climb something. Our first objective was Smith's Gully and so we slogged up Raeburn's Gully towards the cloud base around the middle of the crag, the snowpack was a bit wet and the top 4" or so were a bit mushy but there were footprints leading right up the gully. As we got nearer to the route the broken ice patches of the loch became even more impressive and gave a great backdrop, unfortunately the route was in a similair condition to the loch and melting rapidly!
There was a lot of running water about and the first pitch of snow ice looked like mush. After some deliberation we concluded that since we were here already we may as well have a go and see if it got colder higher up. Scott led off up the first pitch of relatively steep snow mush not getting much inspiring gear, after a good effort to get over the chockstone at the top of the pitch he set up a belay and brought me up. Arriving at the belay I felt like I had been climbing out of a Slush Puppy machine! Looking up at the rest of the route and seeing it looked much the same we decided to save the route for a good day as it gets four stars in the guidebook and we were keen to enjoy it! We then walked up the remainder of Raeburn's Gully passing the Blue Icicle which was very thin at the bottom of the pillar and dripping heavily, the ice was incredibly featured though; it's a shame it's only 10m or so of climbing as it's a really cool feature.
After some wandering about on the plateau where we spent a while looking at a huge cornice about 500m away...which turned out to be about 4' high and only 20m away...we descended Easy Gully to have a play on some of the water ice routes. Even though I had climbed it last year we decided on Last Post as it was easily the best looking route. I led up the pitch and belayed about 35m up on a nice shelf on the right, which had the world's best ice thread before Scott quickly followed and led off up the next pitch. The ice was in amazing condition and really fun to climb, again quite featured from the varying temperatures.
We bailed off after the main feature via an Abalakov and then the thread before collecting out bags and making the long walk back to the car. It was a shame our intended route wasn't in condition but it looked amazing and I will definitely be back for it, it was great to get out again on some fantastic ice and it was a really fun day.
Today I was out at Glentress for a light XC spin with Sean to loosen up and enjoy the fresh air before, hopefully, more climbing later in the week.
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