Caving on Ben Nevis: The Clanger

With a rather colourful avalanche forecast for Glencoe and Lochaber, Dot, Steve and I decided to play it safe and head back to Ben Nevis, as we were quite confident that conditions wouldn’t have changed much from yesterday.  The surface snow up to at least 1000m had thawed and refrozen ever so slightly through the night.

We went in again, with a few ideas, but found ourselves on steep ice leading up to the corner of The Clanger.  I led the main corner pitch, which gave good climbing, but not much gear, so care required.  Steve then took over, as we figured someone needed to get through the yawning, narrow slot that The Clanger is renown for, so with a bit of grunting, cursing and removing of helmet and rack, Steve wriggled his way through, and found himself popping out part the way up the steep chimney we had climbed yesterday.

I must admit, being a bit bigger than Steve, I was a bit apprehensive when it came to my turn to tackle the slot, but somehow managed to exit the narrowest part of the slot by pushing myself out nearly horizontally.  Dot followed, with seemingly little trouble, but had to push the one pack we had between us through first, before following it. Two abseils then took us back to the packs.

I don’t think that Steve found it particularly enjoyable, but I quite liked the esoteric nature of the route..

Other teams on Green Gully, Stringfellow, Tower Ridge, Wendigo and Fore ‘n’ Daft.