WANNA MEET MY SISTERS ?

 

On the summit of A' Ghlas Beinn, Paul and I suddenly swapped a gloomy misty morning for a glorious afternoon.

 

 

 

 

Two figures came up, and turned out to be girls from Dornoch (but not Sisters) ; whom we'd met for just 5 minutes on Geal Charn the previous winter.

 

 

 

To enjoy the afternoon we headed north to an outlier. A long shoulder of steep ground, facing northwards, now took us on to rock-hard neve.

Out with the axe;- then facing in, then cutting steps;- finally crampons on, as it took us over an hour to get down and across the icy hard slopes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A useful prelude to meeting the Five Sisters on Sunday. The south-facing slopes were grassy for 2000 feet from valley to ridge:- just as well because it's

extremely steep ground.

Although the snow cover is only a sliver in the whole view, it was again rock hard, and needed careful going. To our immediate right hand, the north face of the ridge was heavily coated, with some awesome drops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crampons were quickly necessary, as was a short spell of downclimbing.

 

The ridge traverse across 4 snowy summits, adds up to 1500 metres of ascent. However going up can feel straightforward, but there was also 700 metres of descent on steep hard snow; Grade 1 ground, with some unthinkable runouts. The longest was the north side of Sgurr Fhuaran, about 300 metres of snow slope with a deep rock chasm waiting for any slip. After some 3 miles of this, we dropped back out of the snow line and down down down down to Shiel Bridge.

 

Fortunately the weather was pretty much ideal, sunny, cold, and windless. Five lovely Sisters indeed.