We had a relief from the battering by wind and snow today with blue skies and a gentle and dry breeze. With so much fresh snow about (more last night) Andreas, Simon and I went to the West face of Aonach Dubh to stay well clear of any avalanche hazard and enjoy some mixed climbing. We climbed Cyclops (IV,5) in two pitches (great fun despite cruddy ice and not quite frozen turf on the first pitch) and abseiled directly down the route so we could climb Pinnacle Face.

Where Cyclops felt slightly bold and tenuous on soggy placements, Pinnacle Face (by the summer route) was positive and technical with great hooks and torques all the way. It is probably about the same grade too at IV,5 and the third pitch up the wall on the right of the pinnacles is just as spicy.

We managed to avoid the cross loaded slopes at the top of Number Two Gully so we could descend underneath Dinner Time Buttress. There was a slow warming up during the day and the wet snow on steep grass on the way down was the most dangerous part of the day!

So we now have a prolonged thaw forecast with high pressure to the south drawing SW winds from the mid-Atlantic over Scotland for several days. The deep soft snow will settle rapidly (or avalanche) and we will lose snow cover and ice on some routes. However, gully climbs such as Point Five Gully are so fat that they will survive this thaw for when the weather improves, whenever that might be.

Another fall of snow last night came down to just about sea level. My snow socks got my van up the forest track though and we were about the only people who made the wade in to Ben Nevis. Andreas and Simon swapped leads up SW Ridge of Douglas Boulder which felt awesome today under the heavy snow conditions. It is a real adventure to reach the Douglas Boulder and abseil off so it is not surprising that this climb has got so popular in recent years. Nobody else was on it today though!

The wind had swung round a bit to blow up Douglas Gap East Gully and load up the West Gully and slopes near Fawlty Towers. As we abseiled to Douglas Gap we triggered a slab avalanche down the West Gully. In fact we made an abseil from the foot of the ridge to the easy slopes below to avoid any more avalanches! Lots and lots of snow around at the moment, take care.

A swirly, whirly day today on Ben Nevis with strong westerly winds blowing lots of fresh snow around. We had fresh snow falling at sea level over night and it continued during the day in showers. There was lots of spindrift and transportation of snow with windslab building up quickly. Andreas, Steve and I decided to go to Minus Two Gully which worked out OK but I was quite careful with the line of the approach to get there safely enough, even though it is a NW facing slope.

Once we got to the route, the first section looked very thin and patchy. I went up the gully for a few metres before making a couple of steps left into grooves in the slab leading to the fixed belay at 55m. The rest of the route is fat with blue ice and lots of snow. We abseiled down NE Buttress to the First Platform then down Slingsby's Chimney.

The wind was blowing up the gully making our eyebrows rime up quite well. When the wind dropped the spindrift came down the gully!

On the descent I triggered a wee slab avalanche on the First Platform and another one at the foot of Slingsby's Chimney. Both were quite obviously going to go and we were not in any danger of being caught up in them but it was quite spooky for a while and we were quite cautious on the way down from the face. I did hear of other people being caught up in powder avalanches today and it was interesting to see that, although it was forecast a considerable avalanche hazard today, it turned out be observed by SAIS as a high hazard. More snow and more wind tomorrow!