Self reliance is a fundamental principle of mountaineering. By participating we accept this and take responsibility for the decisions we make. These Conditions Reports are intended to help you make good decisions. They do not remove the need for you to make your own judgements when out in the hills.

Wednesday 23 April 2014


Mike and I went pinnacle climbing today. With SE winds and some showers forecast we went for B Buttress on the west face of Aonach Dubh in Glen Coe. Pinnacle Face (V.Diff) gave us some great fun climbing with steep chimneys at the bottom and a wacky move to get out of the chimney. Some more open climbing then got us to a couple of pinnacles, the second of which is actually an enormous block sat across a gap with a through route underneath (Cyclops IV,5).


You can climb this buttress further right to make it about grade Difficult but still going past the pinnacles. As always this face never fails to impress with its steep walls, deep gullies and great atmosphere. There are lots of routes to explore. There is also a lot of snow left in the gullies and we were glad to have ice axes with us. Number Two Gully has 5m deep patches of snow where the usual descent route goes. It will take a while for these to melt away although the streams are quite full with snow melt.





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