West Gully, Beinn an Dothaidh

A relatively luxurious meeting time of 8am and John, Chris and I headed off to climb West Gulley of Beinn a Dothaidh.

The climb is listed in the guide as a Grade 1 and so we knew it wouldn't pose any difficulties. We parked at Achaladair Farm and walked up to the mouth of the corrie and donned our gear, John quickly realising that getting geared up needs familiarisation with your own equipment and needs practice in itself. With John still faffing Chris and I headed up to check out the snow condition on the slope of the gully. The snow seemed stable and well packed with the current bitterly cold northerly wind and we were happy to proceed, John had started ascending the gentle slopes below us so we built a first belay for practice as we waited. John arrived in a bit of a strop that we'd buggered off without him but soon calmed.

We then proceeded to multi pitch up the gully, first me leading, then Chris. The wind funneled through the gully was whipping spindrift upwards and around us, visibility came and went and made communication tricky, all good practice.

After a few hours the novelty of multi pitching a simple gully was waring off as a bloke soloed past us and looked over as if to say "why are you lot making such a meal of an easy gully?"

Eventually we topped out and while John and Chris repacked the gear I nipped over to "bag" the summit proper since Chris and John had already ticked it in February. As we readied ourselves for the descent the conditions changed and we were in a whiteout, compass bearings were taken with difficulty since the bezel of the compass was frozen but accurate enough to get us on the right descent track. I've never had my compass freeze before and along with my frozen water bottle (in my rucksack) and John's fruit frozen solid we realised just how cold the day must have been.

We dropped out of the summit whiteout and stopped to look back at the frozen North face of this amazing mountain. A bit like Ben Nevis, the usual route bypasses a stunning and much more impressive hidden North face.

We vowed to return but I think a fair bit more practice is needed before we climb anything more technical. It's also clarified in my mind that climbing in anything but a standard roped pair is time consuming and increases complexities and should be avoided at this stage on anything but simple training days.