29 April - North Face Route

North Face Route on Central Buttress.

 

Perhaps the best way to escape world events on Friday was to go climbing up a large rock face - no chance of any media coverage reaching you there. So I headed to Glencoe with Karolina, Mark, Erik and Claire to do North Face Route. We hoped it would be a bit quieter than the routes on Rannoch Wall , which was probably the case though we did have 2 parties in front of us. My crack team consisted of Erik and Karolina while Mark enjoyed the company of Claire.

The first 2 pitches follow grooves and cracks which link large ledges, the climbing is scrambly with very shortlived difficulties. One thing to say about the route is that there is a lot of loose gravel and scree on the various ledges thoughout the route, which can easily be dislodged by the movement of ropes, providing a bit of extra excitement.

Mark belaying Claire up pitch 3.

Pitch 3 is an easy scramble and finds you on a large ledge before the real climbing starts. We sunbathed here for a while to wait for the groups in front of us.

Stepping round the nose into the real climbing on pitch 4.

Pitch 4 takes you round an exposed nose and into some steep cracks, which are followed by a slabby traverse left into a cosy belay. After this you climb a steep corner to the foot of a dark chimney.

Attentive belaying from Erik on pitch 5.

The chimney was definitely one of the highlights of the route, a brief section of back and footing followed by some exposed and wide bridging. There is even some in situ gear to clip, which is still in situ despite Erik's best efforts with a nut key and some large rocks.

Chimneying action on pitch 6.

Pitch 7 is probably the best of the route - a descending traverse left down a gravelly ledge leads to some steep cracks. The first few moves of these are the crux. After this you follow a very exposed arete through various corners and slabby ledges with fairly spaced gear. A variety of routes here would be possible - I climbed as close to the arete as possible, but the wall to the right looked similar. This is the last climbing pitch and some scrambling gets you onto Curved Ridge.

Caption competition (it shouldn't be too hard...)

The plan had been to follow this with Agag's Groove but by the time we had topped out on North Face Route it was 6pm, so although Rannoch Wall was nice and quiet, we didn't fancy being benighted and retreated down Curved Ridge - very nice scrambling!

A quality day, with some exceptionally large sausages at the Real Food Cafe providing a fitting conclusion. Probably my last day out for a while as exams loom...