Smith's Gully, Creag Meagaidh

An early start today though we were down at 3pm after climbing Smith's Gully (V, 5) on Meagaidh. This is a classic gully, and proved to be worthy of its status. Good sustained climbing on ice and well formed neve provided delightful and fun climbing.

As we ascended Raeburn's the rocks were all freshly hoaring up. We were a little worried about the snow while approaching Raeburn's Gully. The bottom section had a damp and heavy snow that was reasonably bonded and possible to puncture through to stand on well frozen snow below. Part way up it changed to hard neve then just before the route a drier slab of snow. This same drier snow was encountered near the top and was poorly bonded to the neve below, in this case we could avoid it. On descent we took the safer option of descending down the ridge, navigating in thick mist.

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