East Ridge – Stob Ban, Fawlty Towers – Ben Nevis, Diam Buttress – Aonach Mor

Over the past three days, I've been running an Introductory Winter Climbing Course for Arie and Will, who are over from the Netherlands. They couldn't have asked for better conditions, as winter has truly taken hold of the Highlands and looks to stay with us for some time yet!

On Monday, we tackled the East Ridge of the North Top of Stob Ban, which was amazingly empty. The winds were a noticeable feature of the day, but died instantly as we topped out.

Yesterday, we joined the masses on Ben Nevis, which is proving to be the place to go this week. We climbed a line just to the right of Fawlty Towers, giving a varied route on ice and mixed ground, before descending Tower Ridge and abseiling back down the eastern flank.

Today, we made our way round to the west face of Aonach Mor, which was surprisingly quiet. There, we climbed the excellent Diam Buttress, which definitely has far more technical climbing on it than on Tower Ridge. Some fairly substantial accumulations of snow on the southern side of the buttress and the snow was piling over Aonach Mor and onto the east face today.

New Heights – Active Brands