The weather has been cold and dry for some time now meaning that there has been a good build up of ice on lower slopes than would normally had them. All the low ice routes were starting to come into condition so Craig and I devised a plan to tackle some of them that rarely form given the fact that it was opportunity we might not get again for a while.
First on this weeks list was Eilde Canyon. A crag which was developed relatively recently, around 2010, but somewhere neither of us had visited. The weather was set fair, but the winds looked strong and cold up high so Eilde Canyon seemed a good bet. We parked by the large cairn in Glen Coe and enjoyed a walk in of hard packed windslab and neve, making the approach a breeze. It’s not often we beat the guidebook approach times, but today we were at the absiel boulder in about an hour.
There had been a few teams into the canyon earlier in the week, so finding the absiel boulder was pretty easy, look for the boulder that was dug out with rope marks in the snow, easy! We geared up and abseiled in, not having done the ab before we were unsure how long it was going to be so tied both rope together giving us a full 60m. A single would have done easily, we shall know for next time!
Walking through the canyon is completely different to anywhere else in Scotland, very reminiscent of Canada with climbable icefalls cascading down either sides of the narrow slot canyon and walking along a (mostly) frozen river.
The top for this crag is fairly old and we plucked out an icefall to climb just by looking at it. Ice is always steeper than it looks from the ground!
Craig climbed up and was met with somewhat cruddy ice and then an exposed section to move onto the final moves. He decided to build a belay and bring me up, so that I could have a go. I moved onto the exposed step across but my previous ice screw was not the best and there was no telling what the ice would be like once committing myself to the step across. We decided discretion was the better part of valour so backed off. Craig lowering me down whilst I down climbed and then re clipping him self through his belay so I could do the same for him. We then set about retrieving our gear which proved fairly easy as we made our way to the top of the crack, rigged an abseil, I abed in, got the screws back, continued to the floor and then Craig de-rigged and rejoined me in the base of the canyon.
Another team had been climbing further up the canyon but had also backed off a route, so deciding that we’d had a good day and not wanting to push our luck any further we went for a quick explore up the canyon before beating a retreat back to the cars.
It was a really cool day and great to explore a new venue that neither of us had been to before. Its always nice to try new things in a relatively safe environment! No idea which route we tried we think it was something on Chandelier wall but no routes are described there. The weather was lovely for our walk out but the wind was fairly intense and cold making us happy with our decision to stay low for the day. We think it could have done with a few more “freeze thaw” cycles to bring it into a decent condition, a place to go back to!
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