Aonach Mor 16-01-13

Another great day of conditions on the West.  A little cloud about today and after a clear start we ended up loosing the views with a little very light snow on Aonach Mor East face.  We abbed down Easy Gully which was fine with a fair bit of loose snow but nothing too serious.  We broke trail over to the Prow area also which was all good.  The crag was in great condition for mixed climbing looking white and with bomber turf.  There was also some good looking ice on Nausea and in that area.

I was out with Richard again today who I'm with for 5 days on a climbing 'Improvers' Course which he's taken to well.  He was keen to try something a little harder than yesterday so we went for Stirling Bridge VI / 7 ***.  This again was a great mixed route with some great climbing for Richard to experiment on and play around with axe torques and various mixed climbing technique.  The top out gave a bit of cornice related excitement but actually wasn't as bad as it looked from below, however many of the other routes in the area had large steep cornices at their tops.  Others were out on various routes to the right of Easy gully in the Twins area and were using an abb approach from the posts above.

 The main pitch on Stirling Bridge VI / 7 ***

 Richard loving it!

Chilly enough on the plateau when sat about...