Far Eastern Buttress, Glen Coe

Today I was with Terry and Graham, working for Abacus Mountaineering. With all the fresh snow I wanted something low down that would ideally have a track leading to the base. Fortunately a Jagged Globe team had set off up to the Lochan ahead of us. Roger and Dave with clients Nick and Stuart did a great job of ploughing through waist deep snow, thanks. We took over for a few steps when we caught up, but this was at our turning point towards the crag. Timing is essential.

We managed to find a handy wind scoop that lead up to the left hand side of the crag. There is no recorded route up here, but we climbed a fun ice groove with a few steep moves then a turfy groove higher up at grade III. The guys wanted to learn about rope work and gear so I arranged a variety of belays and even placed two screws. On the way down we found a few other rock outcrops to look at more wire placements.

Few teams coming over from the Zig Zags but sounds like no climbing was done up in the Lochan. There is a fair mix of snow high up. We found a variety of windslab layers with the graupel from last week hiding underneath. There was a slide, probably from the weekend, above the Lochan path that had dislodged a some small saplings.