We parked up in the car park just before 6am and long before daylight. The first car there for a change. Not the case the day before, when we only left the car at 11 am and started the route just after midday. That was different though. An easy short route, Doctors choice IV 4** (above). Mark Stuart and I had climbed it in just under 3 hours. Today, Mark had gone climbing on the 'Gar with Henning, Stuart and I planned to head over to the Shelterstone for the classic Sticil face V6****.
We walked in the dark. Under the cliffs of Coire an t-Sneachda up the icy goat track to the high col linking the Coire to the loch A'an basin. On a nice day the view here is breathtaking, but all we had was a bubble of blue light from our head torches showing us the way. We traversed over Hells lum to avoid avalanches then dropped down the side of the mighty shelterstone and around to the base of our route only to find we'd been beaten to it by another team. The decision was quickly made to go for 'second prize' Route major. This classic Tom Patey route weaving is way up the full lenght of Carn Etchachans 300m frontal face (cliff on the left, above) should provide a good challenge.
The climbing up the first three pitches was easy with only the route finding proving difficult. pitch four gave us the crux. The squeeze chimney. It was Stuart's turn for the crux as I'd had it on Bells route. Climbing these winter chimneys is thruxy, inelegant and sometimes terrifying using full body friction to make upward progress in this case to find a hook and thus pull on to the slab (above). Stuart battled well and was soon at the next belay. My turn. Lots of huffing and puffing seen me at the 'perch' amd for the crux I put my axes over a nut and just used my arms and legs to make progress.
The RAF chopper hung about in the basin for a while. Flying by now and then. We quickly realized that we weren't going to make the top in daylight as we'd joked before. The deep powder and poor protection putting up resistance and making climbing edgy. A diagonal pitch led us to the battlements groove. In the guide this is described as being to the right of the pink rock, not so easy to find when the rock is rimed up.
Stu led up the groove (above) to the fork which I decided to take the right branch of. It had gotten dark by now and head torches were donned, I'm quickly getting used to climbing on big cliffs in the dark. The groove was well iced and poorly protected. This led me to a slab and the snow bay. Not far to from the top, we hoped. The belay was poor, really poor. So i dug out a bucket seat to reinforce it. Whilst bringing Stu up I turned off my head torch. It was dark, cold and we were on the top of a big cliff in the middle of the Cairngorms, I imagined that we could have been anywhere. I had company soon as Stu came up and joined me, we exchanged gear, a couple of words and he set off to the top, hopefully. I didn't mention the belay, best not. He topped out shortly after and brought me up to the plateau. We packed up quickly, had a bight to eat and set off with the Moon shining our path back to the car. A long day, but a day to remember.
