Tollaidh Crags, Lochnagar and the Big Bad Ben

I had thought that working freelance would give plenty of time, but that seems as much at a premium as ever! I'm not complaining though, it's been a great week of work. The weather helped, with summer having finally arrived in the Highlands. I swung by Loch Tollaidh Crags with Rick on my way from Lewis to Ballater. We only had an afternoon, and it was the first time Rick had climbed outdoors in a long while so we had a nice chilled afternoon exploring some of the lower grade classics of the crag. We climbed Raven's Edge (VDiff**), Assault Slab (VDiff***), After Eight (Severe) and Rough Slab (VS4c**).

 Assault Slab deserves its 3 stars we thought

Rough Slab giving a little more thought

Then it was on over to Ballater ready for some D of E supervision for Albyn School. They had 6 groups out on the hill so camping was pretty sociable with 4 teachers and myself and Louisa out to keep an eye on proceedings. On the second day we left tents so we could get up high and make the most of the great weather. My team did a circuit of the 5 Munros of the Broad Cairn - Lochnagar horseshoe walk, covering 27km or so. There were a few sore feet by the end of the day but they did amazingly well, making good decisions and with no complaints. 

 Looking up towards the Dubh Loch

 Almost there! The top of Lochnagar

On top of the final Munro of the day at 1700

Once we got back to the finish point at the Royal Lochnagar Distillery and the group disappeared back to Aberdeen, I headed west for a few hours of sleep before an early morning marshalling tip up Ben Nevis. Jagged Globe organise an annual Three Peaks charity event for Action Medical Research and this year there were well over 200 people taking part. With other events and independent walkers on the hill it was pretty busy even by 6am (by which time I'd been up top for an hour enjoying the sun). There were a couple of skiers in Tower Gully who had also made an early start. With so many groups out it was good to see lots of familiar faces on the hill from the local instructing community and further afield.

 Ben Nevis at 5am

Views across the Mamores in the sun

The last few days I've been working at the Scaladale Centre with groups from Carloway Primary and West Side. Carloway is closing at the end of term and the children going to bigger schools, so they had bought all the children (all 14 of them!) from P1 to P7 which was brilliant fun for Raft Building and Survival Skills. Back to Scaladale for the last day with West Side tomorrow before heading for some climbing adventures again...

Exploring the islands some more

It's been a busy week, stating off with a mini island adventure with the girls and Roddy. We timed the tides right to have a walk over to Eilean Chaluim Chille from South Lochs and explore the ruins over there and the coastline.

The tidal causeway - finding mussel shells

Rock art on the wee island

The next couple of days were spent getting down to Kilmarnock for a D of E Assessor Accreditation day - no pics of this as it's paperwork stuff! Nice to get some ideas of what groups do in different areas as their qualifying assessments, especially with regard to the purpose of their exped. It's not all about flora and fauna with some great imaginative projects like re-enacting the story of MacBeth in photo's!

When I got back to Lewis the weather was beautiful, so I headed up to the Clisham to check out the scramble on the south side of the hill - Coire Dubh Slabs, grade 3. It's a lovely wee route and a surprisingly short day out, taking me only a little over an hour to get to the scrambling and 3 1/2 hours in total car to car... Even though I stopped for lots of pics!

 Looking in to Coire Dubh, the slabs are obvious just left of centre

 Mmm... Gneiss!

Great views of mountains and sea :)

After such a warm day on the hill, we took the girls for a quick swim in the sea after school and I was happy to join them and take the heat out of my shoulders which managed to get a bit pink even with my factor 50 on!

Friday I headed out climbing with a couple of guys from the HebSAR team, Neil and Charlie. Neil found a route which went at about HS/VS, and I found a line that went at VS or so until the last couple of metres when the rock changed in character. The lovely positive edges that had seen me up the slightly overhanging rock disappeared and became lots of rounded stuff. I ended up backing off, much to my disappointment! I felt slightly better about it when first Charlie, then Neil both backed off at around the same point, and even more so when Charlie struggled up it on a top rope... We were climbing at the crags at Riof beach. There aren't that many bits of rock large or continuous enough to provide routes especially at amenable grades, but there is a lot of great bouldering - next time the mat is definitely going to go in the car. 

 Charlie working out the (lack of) holds on the top part of my attempted route

 Charlie seconding the route that Neil lead

The line I spotted - it looked good!

Saturday Roddy and I were out with the HebSAR team for some rigging training. 3 of the team have just come back from a rigging course run by the MRCofS so it was a chance for everyone to share the information they had picked up and make sure we were all up to speed with it. We set up lowers with IDs and Rescue 8s, using a mix of stakes, hedgehogs, slings and rock gear to secure anchors. A very productive day with lots of ideas thrown in to the mix and interesting for me to see how organised rescue differs (and is similar to) the improvised sort that we learn about as instructors. HebSAR don't get the volume of technical rescues that other teams like Lochaber or Glencoe do, but with climbing on the islands steadily increasing in popularity it's important to make sure the skills base is there.

John briefing the team before the first lower

Sunday was spent chilling on the beach at Riof (yes, again!) with Roddy and the girls. With bodyboarding, rock pooling, sand castles, exploring little rocky islands and some sit on top sea kayaking they were pretty tired at the end of the day... And so were we!

Playing on the bodyboards and dodging moon jellyfish!

I'm off to the mainland for some climbing and some work this week, so here's hoping the sun shines some more...