Marie enjoying Tower Ridge

Today I was joined by Marie who had specifically asked to climb Tower Ridge as it was to be her finale to a five day scrambling trip on Skye. It was forecast to be very windy and cold above 1000m. Thankfully it wasn’t windy at all but it was certainly winter above the Little Tower. Marie hadn’t worn crampons until today so you can only imagine the crash course she received as we progressed up the ridge. I have to say I was very proud of her, she did so well coping with the difficult conditions.

Crampons above the Little Tower

Eastern Traverse under snow

Verglas, frost, hoar and slippery rocks on Tower Gap

Topping out up steep snow/ice

Abligatory summit selfy

We topped out onto the plateau to be met by white out conditions and the need to navigate over to the summit. As we packed kit away figures appeared out of the ming – tourists looking for the summit! I don’t get annoyed on the Ben anymore as I have just come to accept that people will take their own risks whilst under their own steam, inside however; I was seething that Mountain Rescue have to deal with these kind of incidents. A walk over the the summit trig to be met by the same old questions, how do I get down, where is the ‘path’ etc, etc….. Two guys even emerged from the summit shelter stoned after smoking a ‘spliff’!? We were followed by folk on the descent, all to disorientated too figure out the way down but thankfully, having worn crampons, we made good time back down the track and onto the van.

Yesterday I finished working on a summer ML training course with Bill Strachan. The course was run by Bill but through the college and so all of the candidates were students. It was nice to see such a progression over the week and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed helping train them towards becoming a Mountain leader. The weather was mixed but we were pretty lucky and only really got ‘wet’ on one day of the week, a great course and something I would like to be more involved with in the future.

Bill getting to grips on the steep ground day

Night nav

Wild camping – bliss!

‘Summer’ ML Trainees

Geal Charn team shot

Summit Geal Charn