Scottish winter climbing starts above ~900m. The "roadside crag" (as we were told by two very friendly guys from Aberdeen over a pint at the end of the day) of Stob Coire nan Lochan in Glencoe requires a pretty grueling 2-hour approach straight up, and the snow doesn't start until way up there).



On a cloudy Sunday with a low avalanche hazard, there'll be close to 100 people on a roadside crag like this. Here, 'cloudy' means the mountain is enveloped in a cloud that lifts occasionally to reveal a glimpse of some amazing craggy and snowy scenery. Most of the time, you're lucky to see to the other end of the gully.


We drove from Edinburgh at 5:30am in 2.5 hours, hiked in, and found Boomerang Gully (Scottish grade II) the only non-crazy line with nobody visibly on it. A "classic Scottish gully" according to both the guidebooks and the locals, Boomerang in full conditions is full of deep, steep snow, which is hard to protect. Rocky sides taunt and entice the leader to clear off the snow and pick away at the ice only to reveal mossy, flaring cracks that won't take any gear, unless you come prepared with pins, which we weren't. There's not much ice, and no ice screws are possible. To be fair, we found very reasonable rock belays. Apart from the very first one - we buried an axe in the flimsy snow, and decided not to fall today. Just not so much between the belays - an average of 1 piece per 50m pitch. How very alpine!


The whole thing is 210m long, we pitched out the first 4 pitches, and simuled the last bit to the top. At the end of pitch 4, the right-hand side variation we took calls for an interesting walk around a frozen boulder, which deposits you in really steep and steepening snow leading up to the rim, with a breath-catching view of the rocky gully across and below. The top of this part of the Stob (or however you're supposed to refer to it) is higher than the rest of the rim, so a nice view like the one above can be seen if the cloud lifts for a second. Which it did, in time to show us where to descend.

All in all, a life-affirming day in a beautiful place.