With a strong south easterly moving the snow around we headed up into the Lost Valley in Glencoe. Making our way up through the gorge there was huge amounts of ice on the slabs on the true right bank. However the cliffs around Rev Ted's Gully looked surprisingly bare.
On closer acquaintance there were some significant streaks of ice but none of the high ice routes looked in condition. We climbed a direct start to Rev Ted's Gully which isn't in the SMC guidebook but must have been climbed before? This gave a 25 m icefall at around IV/V, some easy ground with a couple of awkward steps (35m) and a second 10m ice fall (IV) to reach the bottom of the gully proper.
Once established in the gully we got the full spindrift experience. We swam up the deep snow linking some interesting icy steps. The left hand chimney variation finish was climbed on frozen turf at grade IV. We descended down the Zig Zags which are in good winter condition.
There was plenty of snow being moved on to north & west facing slopes but we also found plenty of pockets of soft windslab in the gully (east facing). The snow is still very unconsolidated but with warmer temperatures on the way things should start to stabilise after some freeze thaw cycles.
Photo; 1st pitch of Rev Ted's Gully (Direct Start) IV+, 4, (c) John Pickles
