Sron na Lairig
Another snowy weekend and Maria and I were heading north again on Friday afternoon. We hadn't really decided what to do yet - we were staying in Arrochar, but with slightly erratic weather patterns and fresh snowfall we were concerned that the hills in that area might just have fresh, wet snow on unfrozen ground. With lots of fresh snow the gullies further north were not a good alternative, so we went for the safe option - a ridge.
Sron na Lairig is a slightly scrappy and vegetated grade 2 scramble in summer, but in winter it gets 2 stars and looked like it could be fun so we headed off into the cloudy morning confident the forecast of clearing skies would come true soon. After a pleasant wander through the Lairig Eilde, we headed up towards the route, and following the description in the guidebook we started out on the left-hand side of the buttress. This was easy, but a bit scrappy on (at best) partially frozen turf covered in quite wet snow.
As we gained height, we soon found better conditions and some nice mixed ground where we roped up. It was still pretty cloudy and there was a bit of snowfall, but the climbing was good fun and we moved together up a gradually narrowing ridge. Although the climbing was fairly straightforward there were some pretty big drops off to the side to keep things interesting.
The final section of the climb involved a dodgy-looking snow slope that raised a few concerns over avalanche risk, so we took a fixed belay and pitched it. There were a couple of guys climbing in front of us, and as I approached the top they called down to me saying there were some good block belays.
They had started the pitch from the same point as us, so I was a bit confused when my rope ran out before I got to the blocks. "Is that a 50m rope?" I asked. "No, 60m" came the response. "Oh, bugger."
They very kindly saved me the effort of burying my ice axes in the snow, and gave me a length of rope attached to their belay so I could bring Maria up the final pitch.
Having seen quite a few small natural avalanches during the day, we decided heading to the col to the southeast seemed the safest descent as we could lose quite a lot of height on the ridge before heading back down into the Lairig Eilde via a not-too-dodgy little snow slope. The promised clearing skies came during the descent, and we had some great views into Glen Etive and the Lairig Eilde as we had lunch at the col.
We had hoped to at least get a short walk in on Sunday, but the morning brought torrential rain, so we settled for a cooked breakfast in the B&B followed by a drive south.
