Dry Tooling & Snow Holes.

Dry tooling under the Ballachulish Bridge.

With the surrounding hills still in a very unstable condition we opted to stay low and look at some more advanced techniques and skills in winter mountaineering and climbing. We spent the morning dry tooling on the Ballachulish Bridge crag which provided a great challenge and some huge improvements in technique. This afternoon we drove up into Glencoe and looked in more depth at snow anchors and winter ropework. The final job for the day was to build at four person snow hole with only our axes! However the snow was in perfect condition for digging and in a very short space of time we had a very comfortable abode. Today I was working for Adventure Peaks.

The avalanche risk is as high as it's been for many years, across almost the full spectrum of slope aspects. At 300m in Glencoe the week surface hoar layer was still evident beneath approximately 60cm of soft windslab. Despite the improvement in weather over the weekend the snow pack is going to remain very unstable for some time. Approaches and exits to climbs will be particularly at risk. Some days it just pays to drink coffee and come back to fight another day.

Digging a snow hole in Glencoe.