Winter not over just yet...

With rain looming over the Peak for a few days, Sari and I packed up for some winter fun in Scotland. We charged through the night to get past Loch Lomond before the road closure at 10pm, overtaking the work vehicles just in the nick of time. After a few hours sleep we woke early and set off up the Ben in search of Comb Gully (IV 4). Having just missed Rosie at the CIC we had to set off without a cuppa into the Coire. 

 The climbing itself was great but felt really full on due to the dump truck at the top chucking huge loads of spindrift down on us. Like a giant snow shower all day! My goggles were too scared to come out of my sack so they stayed safely inside and I resorted to climbing blind! In addition my hood came down to allow me to gather a nice snow batch in the back of my jacket and all around my neck - check out the huge snowballs that gathered on my plaits. After applying liberal amounts of hand cream at the belay, (scars from previous week in Peak) a pesky ice screw then slipped out of Sari's hand. I also couldn't retrieve a runner slightly before the belay so that got left behind too. And somewhere buried in the spindrift of that fateful belay is my camera!! 

Still the climbing was ace and we did well given it was our first day out together in winter.