Another tremendous day in the Highlands!

Ken: It seems like days of good weather are like buses; you wait a while, then two come at once. Today was another stunning day in the Scottish Highlands, with similar conditions to yesterday, with maybe a little more wind on the summits. For day two of our Winter Mountaineering course, we headed to the West Face of Aonach Mor, where we climbed Golden Oldie. The crux today was probably the approach slopes, which were as icy as I’ve ever known them. The team certainly had a great introduction to front-pointing!

The route felt quite alpine today, with some sections almost completely bare of snow. Due to needing to pitch the approach slopes too, the route felt longer than usual, and gave the team plenty of time mountaineering on a variety of terrain.

On the summit plateau, we popped over to the East Face, to have a look a the crags. There’s a huge contrast between the dry rocks of the buttresses to the north of Easy Gully versus the rimed up and very wintry buttresses to the south.