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ClimbRannoch? No, not this
time.
(Gavin, May
2005)
I finally met up with Dick
Barker for the first time in person only recently, albeit that I used to
hear Bish telling me great stories of his adventures with him over many
years during and after their time in the Antarctic.
Ironically Dick only lives about
eight miles from me and regularly trains on the Wetherby crag, barely a
mile from my house. We met up at in Wetherby one night, and I realised
how unfit I was as I could barely get off the ground while he swung
about the place traversing the damned thing like he knew every hold.
Having spent so many years messing about on that crag he should know
every hold! However, that was no great comfort to me as I found myself
stuck barely 10 feet off the ground taking advice from Dick about my
next move.
The only solution was to spend
the last couple of months secretly slipping off down to the crag at
every opportunity in some vague attempt to gather some degree of self
respect, only to be lost again on the Buachaille in the form of a
navigation blunder…
Rannoch Wall, which seemed only
fitting after the Rannoch Dinner. With the English bank Holiday at the
end of May, and living in Yorkshire, the timing of the Rannoch Dinner
was perfect. Dick and Ana (who provided an excellent driving service for
the beer drinkers) picked me up and North we headed mile after mile,
beer after beer. We planned to do what we could up at Ullapool, other
than to continue drinking to excess, then head south to the Buachaille
to climb on Monday.
Conditions were a complete
washout up at the Dinner, so from Friday right through to Sunday beer
was the only thing on the agenda. As the Rannoch headed home, off we
went down towards the Kingshouse only to find that it was fully booked.
So we ordered beer instead. Off to Bridge of Orchy, fully booked, so we
ordered beer instead. Then south to Inverarnan, got some rooms sorted
out, and headed straight for more beer. At least on Monday we had the
option to head back to the Buachaille, or simply head south and home to
Yorkshire.
Monday morning arrived with blue
skies, and no excuses other than to head back to the Buachaille,
strangely with no hangover. As we passed Tyndrum the driver’s window
mysteriously went down and would not go back up. We left Anna to sort
things out with the AA while Dick and I did the only useful thing we
could and headed off up the hill.
On the first stages of Curved
Ridge I suggested we break out over Crowberry Gully onto what I
(insanely) thought was Rannoch Wall (what an arse, it was North East
Buttress, self respect out the window). Things got from bad to worse,
and to Dick’s credit he was convinced we were on the wrong face.
“Where the hell is Agag’s
Groove?” we kept wondering as Dick thrashed around for first lead,
albeit in style, cursing the fact that everything seemed wrong. We
studied the 1972 route book, stood back a bit from the crag, moved in,
stood back, moved up, came down, stood back, looked at the book…. The
fact that it was over 20 years since I was on Rannoch Wall was a thin
excuse for my astounding error. We eventually resigned ourselves to the
fact that we were in the wrong place and decided to head on up anyway,
with no real clue as to what we would find.
We are not sure what we were on
other than the fact that it was fairly good going, but the protection
was crap, at least given the rack we had! We finished a route to find
ourselves high on a steep grassy ledge in time for the rain and cloud to
come in. We looked down into Crowberry Gully wondering whether we could
abseil off, but the combination of the view down and having to sacrifice
gear swung the balance in favour of finding our way up the crag as the
weather worsened and time running thin. Long run outs on poor rock
finally took us out on a high ledge with an easy escape onto the top of
North East Buttress as the rain gave way to snow.
As we walked onto the summit of
the Buachaille the weather cleared. Off down to the car, which was now
repaired, and then south in the beer bus.
ClimbRannoch? Did we hell. But a
great day anyway.
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