Traprain Law

Today I was at Traprain with a group of kids from ratho who were climbing outside for the first time today. We had the crag to ourselves, dry rock and reasonable weather. They all climbed routes from diff to severe and put into practice some of the things they have been learning indoors.

Mucho Snow in the Gorms!

Nick was out ski touring in the Cairngorm today and kindly sent me this picture looking from Lurcher's to Macdui. He said the skiing was superb. They went from the summit of Ben Macdui to the car park in one hour. Nice day to be out.

Point 5

I was on the Ben today with Sharon who wanted to climb point 5. After a bit of debate about the teams already on the route we decided to join the fun and take our time. Sharon aleady has alot of experience and decided she would like to lead the first pitch. She did this on good ice at a solid grade 4. I took over for the rest of the route, which had excellent climbing as usual but the ice was not as good as I had expected. The Narrows and the Rogue pitch both had good ice to start, but this quickly became ok to climb but poor to protect. Overall conditions were good, there were the odd spindrift avalanches but not too serious.

Real Rock

Today I was at Rosyth Quarry with 10 kids from the EICA on a real rock session. They had a good day with good weather climbing around 12 routes from diff to HVS.