Winter Ramsay attempt (Running)

Thursday 12 February 2009 01:09PM

I came up to Scotland as a last-minute decision, cancelling other things I had planned, because I thought the conditions looked like they might be good enough to attempt the Ramsey round on lightweight skis. They were, but, as a friend of mine recently commented, I seem to be a “thaw magnet”; whenever I am in the UK and keen to climb in Scotland conditions turn rubbish and whenever I’m abroad they come good again. Sportscotland should pay me to live in Chamonix ;)

So it was today. I spent all of yesterday madly sorting important bits of kit while glorious sunshine poured through the windows. Primary problem was that I only had one pair of skins. Since skins often struggle to stick after the 4-5 transitions in a typical race, I really wanted to take a spare set for the Ramsay round as I knew there would be a lot more skin changes than that (going from uphill to downhill, or vice versa). No shops in Fort William sold them, so I reverted to plan B which was to reglue my old skins so they would be super sticky and hopefully last long enough.

At the 11th hour the forecast for Thursday changed from stellar to cloudy with some snow showers. I decided to leave Wednesday evening instead of the previous plan of Thursday afternoon, in an attempt to get a moonlit night before the clouds came in. This unfortuntately left me with the most technical skiing of the whole round to do in the dark – off Ben Nevis, off Carn Mor Dearg and off Aonach Beag. To make matters worse the moon was shrouded in cloud so I had some pretty nervous and slow skiing for the first half of the night. The first few peaks felt like they were going so badly, with lots of skis-on-skis-off faffing (lots of terrain that I couldn’t decide whether it was better to ski or walk, not helped by only being able to see 20m ahead), that I nearly pulled out at Aonach Mor. Later on the terrain mellowed, over the grey corries, and I was able to motor a bit more, making back some time that I had lost earlier. As I left Leacach bothy for the climb up Stob Coire Easain, it started snowing lightly. I realised then that my attempt would probably be over if it got any heavier, but decided to at least carry on for the time being to familiarise myself with the terrain for a future attempt. In the event the weather got much worse, and much worse than forecast, with driving snow and a strong, buffetting wind. I was glad of my goggles, slowed my pace considerably and was very careful with the navigation for the rest of the way to the Fersit dam, where I decided enough was enough.