UK Mountains Expedition Report

For anyone who doesn't know, Torridon is on the Scottish mainland almost opposite Skye and some three hours north of Fort William.

The intention was to drive north to Fort William, stay overnight, then climb Ben Nevis and continue to Torridon the next day.

The climb of the Ben started well enough as you can see from the photo. We elected to take the 'Tourist trail' to the summit, which is far from being the shortest, but is certainly the easiest ascent. It was a little cold and damp, but nothing too extreme. Several hours later, we arrived at the summit, which, as you can see, was somewhat different.

Being experienced mountaineers, we were well prepared for the conditions, but it is easy to see how people can get into serious trouble on the Ben.

After descending, we continued our journey Northwards and after a further three hours arrived at the cottage (which took some finding in the dark).

The cottage was just about as remote as it could be, a twenty minute drive was needed to the nearest village.

The day after our arrival I was straight into the climbing with an ascent of Liathach via Sinister Prong (240m, IV/V). It was an excellent climb, but the snow was very unconsolidated and made it a very frustrating climb.

Day two saw me off again, this time it was Bells Gully (230m, IV/V) on Liathach, but we elected to climb Liathach first, then descend into the Coire and climb out again. Bells Gully is another excellent climb, spoilt only by the poor snow. In good conditions, it gets 3*, and the view coming out of the gully and onto the summit is worth every step. The actual summit, whilst being on the Liathach ridge, is actually called Spidean a Choire Leith (958m), so one gets a Munro bagged too! The total ascent, climb and descent took us 9 hours to complete and we weren't hanging around.

Whilst others were receiving expert steep ground tuition, I took a walk up the East Ridge of Fuar Tholl(907m), which is about grade II snow, so crampons and an axe were needed (for confidence) on the ascent and descent. The climb was well worth it as you can see from the pictures.

It was a long day today, we eventually got down about 8:00pm. Chris was suffering badly with a strained muscle and decided that he would go home.

For the penultimate day, we elected to do the east Gully of Triple Buttress on Ben Eighe (250m IV/V). There is a long walk in of about 1.5-2 hours, but the route is fairly flat all the way into the Coire with just an easy climb into the Coire itself.

The view of Triple Buttress itself is quite spectacular as one crests the rise.

To the right of the buttresses is Fusilage Gully, so called because there is an aircraft fusilage there (a Lancaster I am told by one of my readers!) that crashed on 13th March 1951.

The East Gully route starts between the first and second buttresses from the right. There is a scary path that leads into the route from the left above the dark rock. We elected to rope up for this and pitch it, although I am sure it feels scarier than it is - a fall would be fatal though!

From the summit, it is an easy, though slightly painful on the knees descent to the path back to the car.

The final day saw us tackle a reasonably straight forward rock climb called the Cioch Nose.

Whilst it only gets a Severe grade, it is still a tough climb in places, and even harder when wet - which it was today. It will be good to come back in the summer and do it again. In good conditions, it would be just the best outing ever.