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The Scottish Mountaineers Good Cafe Guide

The winter season just gone has seen a number of SOC bunkhouse weekends for joint climbing and skiing section meets take place in Scotland, with trips based at Laggan, Fort William, Kingussie and Glen Coe. As is usual with the Scottish weather, we had the best and worst of conditions, with some days seeing some good routes being done and other days seeing a long café-crawl!

The 1st meet was on 18-20 January at the Potteries Bunkhouse in Laggan, near Newtonmore, with 11 SOC'ers attending. The poor weather, or non-existent snow conditions, rightly put off several folks mainly planning to ski, and this was confirmed on the initial visit to Cairngorm Ski Centre; the slopes were pretty bare! Myself and Tony Craven ended up walking into Coire an Lochain and onto part of the Fiacaill Ridge but the two new lads, Andy Wond and Simon Longley, soloed The Couloir which was the only gully route worth even looking at in the Northern Corries. Ursula Collie and Tony also did the complete Fiacaill Ridge! The Sunday forecast was promising but a huge temperature rise overnight saw the little snow there was totally stripped off the mountains. The driving winds reported at 70-80mph on the top by the Mountain Rescue team in the Coire Cas car park soon put paid to any ideas of a mountain day on the Sunday, and we headed for the café next door to Nevisport in Aviemore. Just to finish off the café tour, myself and Andy Platell also stopped off in Pitlochry to join Andrew Hogarth and Patrick Montgomery for another café visit!

The 01-03 February saw a meet of 12 at the Farr Cottage Bunkhouse in Corpach near Fort William. The weather forecast was even worse than the previous meet, with gale force winds predicted throughout the UK, and only a handful of cars being seen on the road between Stirling and Fort William on the way up by myself, Andy Platell, Andy Wond and Trish Murray! We had pretty much written off the Saturday with the forecast being extremely bad on the wind front, but were optimistic for the good Sunday forecast being true. Our late arrival found several folk in bed, with the remainder in the bunkhouses bar! Yes, a bunkhouse with a bar!! The proprietor, Stuart, was very welcoming and, well ...., we finished at 4.30am. The Saturday, well written off, saw a lengthy traverse of the Nevisport, West Coast and Ellis Brigham interspersed with café breaks. New SOC'ers, David Ballantyne and Tony Shepherdson, managed an easy rock route on Polldubh crag while various parties (Carl Rouse, Hattie Booth, Peter Taylor and Dave Hall, and Trevor Cousins and Gwendolynn Heley) went for very windswept walks above the snowline. After their hard day on the Saturday, the Sunday saw Team 4.30 up for the 8am gondola onto Aonoch Mor, with myself and Andy Wond doing Left Twins, Andy Platell and Trish Murray doing Right Twins and David and Tony doing Easy Gully.

The third meet on 22-24 February saw 11 SOC'ers turn up for a meet based at the Lairds Bothy in Kingussie. The forecast was much better than on previous weekends, with Andy Wond, Trish Murray, Andy Platell and Tony Craven doing Central Gully in Coire an t-Sneachda, and myself, Gary Richardson and Tony Shepherdson having a general bimble around the Coire and the Plateau via the ridge between the Coire and Coire Cas. The Sunday saw clear blue skies with no clouds, with Andy Wond and Andy Platell doing Red Gully and myself, Trish and Tony zooming up Aladdin's Couloir to bask in the sun on the plateau! Andrew Hogarth got a skiing element to these weekends in, with some Nordic training for Pete Taylor prior to their Norway trip in March, with Patrick Montgomery and Gwendolynn Heley also having a go. Only café visited, to my knowledge, was the one next to Nevisport in Aviemore .... ?

The 4th meet was on 08-10 March at the Leacantium Farm Bunkhouse in Glencoe. Again, the weather forecast was poor with a high level route on the Ben being the only likely solution for putting the crampons on. Gary & Julie Richardson headed up towards the CIC for a walk, with Tony Craven also getting a walk in. The rest of the team, starting late at 9am, stormed up to the bottom of the Douglas Boulder and traversed into the base of Garadadh Gully (II) over ground that was often harder than the route itself, with an ascent, a descent and even an abseil happening before the route itself!. Finally at the base, myself, Tony Shepherdson, Andy Watson and Mary Walters somehow managed to use two ropes and a single leader to get us over the 1st (crux) pitch and the following pitch, with Andy Platell & Samantha Martin and Andy Wond & Trish Murray doing the 3 pitch route in a more traditional style with only 2 people on a rope! The last start saw us walking down from the CIC in the dark and a late arrival at the Clachaig. Special mention must go to Mary Walters and Sam Martin, who had never used an ice axe or worn crampons before, but took to them like experts, never slipped or fell over once and were constantly smiling and grinning about what a great day they were having, when they should have been whimpering nervously like normal novices!! The weather on the Sunday was as bad as predicted and, as no one could be bothered after a very long Ben day, we all headed for the usual café crawl round Fort William .…

The common thread in all the meets was to arrange a bunkhouse with decent facilities for each meet, close to a ski area that would allow both winter mountaineering and skiing to take place. The big issue is that many bunkhouses must be booked months in advance, and several folks ended up being disappointed because places were not available at the last moment. More bunkhouses meets will be organised for the 2003 winter season, but deposits will need be needed in October & November this year - watch this space for details ..…

Neil 'Bomber' Harold

Last Modified: 7 May, 2003