Petestack Blog

Finding myself on my own and wanting to make use of a glorious summer Friday with poorer weather forecast for the weekend, today’s original objective was to solo Castle Ridge (Mod), after which a descent by Ledge Route (Easy) should follow naturally. But somehow (thinking ‘why stop there when it won’t take that long and there’s plenty more to do on the Ben?’) my wishlist for a perfectly-formed day soon grew to take in the ascent of Tower Ridge (Diff) and traverse of the Carn Mor Dearg Arete. So that’s what I did… (more…)

On Tuesday I was back at the Ardnamurchan Ring Crags with Lorenzo and Chuck, but this time on Achnaha Buttress and Sron nan Gabhar rather than the honeypot Meall an Fhir-eoin Beag. (more…)

Today (with the forecast suggesting potentially showery weather everywhere with the possible exception of the east) Chuck and I decided to skip the long drive and take our chances with somewhere relatively local. So we headed for the intriguing sounding Indian Slab Crag up Glen Gour on the far side of the Corran Ferry, which promised good multipitch VS slab climbing on clean, rough gneiss with poor protection (‘not over protected’, to quote the usual guidebook euphemism!) and ‘dubious belays’. And that’s exactly what we got… (more…)

Tonight I did it. January Jigsaw with Henry. And the top part of Crowberry Ridge, the Tower and Stob Dearg again. And what a route it is… Agag’s more devious, but equally logical, twin.

So which is better? Can’t say, because they’re different, but does it matter? They’re both brilliant, quite sensational at their grades and the type of routes you should do again and again. And again! :-)

This morning I was back at the start of January Jigsaw with Isi Oakley. But everything was damp from persistent low cloud, the sun just wasn’t breaking through to dry it up and, after waiting three-quarters of an hour in vain for some sign of improvement, we headed off up the Buachaille via Curved Ridge and Crowberry Tower. It’s sunnier now, but Isi’s working later this afternoon and we had to be back. Oh well…

Three nights on the trot out this week, with not everything going quite to plan: (more…)

Today I was climbing on the East Face of Aonach Dubh with Jamie Bankhead, intent on a ‘smash and grab raid’ before a bright start turned to forecast rain. So perhaps you’ll not be surprised to hear that we did indeed get wet in the end, although just quite how wet was still a surprise to us… (more…)