Resurrection (III,V) (29.01.2012)  

We woke up to a clear sky in Strathcarron and with an early start we left the cottage at 7am and drove north to the Fannaichs, a nice little bundle of munros north of Torridon/south of Ullapool. It wasn't all that cold outside, but after disembarking from the van it felt very chilly with the wind blowing once again. We began the walk-in from somewhere on the A835 and headed straight out in a more or less southwesterly direction towards the coire, passing Loch a' Mhadaidh on the way.

It was roughly 7 or 8 km just to reach the foot of the climb, and with all our climbing gear weighing down the rucksacks, it made for quite a lengthy day out ahead of us (and hence the early start)! Sadly too, by the time we reached it, we'd been abandoned by the sun and it was windy enough to have both Debbie and myself feeling extremely chilly! After a short-ish pause at the loch to eat something, put on extra clothes and gear up for the climbing, we made our way a short distance further to the start of the route, the Resurrection.

A nice little scoop allowed for a comfortable belay, although it didn't seem to provide much shelter from the spindrift which was now threatening to fill our jackets up with snow at every opportunity! Graded a Scottish III in most guidebooks, but as always Martin was finding alternative ways to make the route harder, and as such we found ourselves stood at the foot of an ice pillar. It was about 10-15m (max) in height and stood at the bottom of it, it didn't look all that menacing - but proved otherwise only when we came to climbing it ourselves after he'd finished off that first pitch.

Poor Debbie was climbing ahead of me, and fortunately Martin had the rope tight on her all the time but she struggled at least 5 times over to get up that pillar! I don't know how she quite managed to do it in the end, but from somewhere she summoned up enough strength to finally overcome the difficulties and make it to the end of the first pitch. I took one slip on it, and it was pretty solid water ice, and vertical! Luckily though, the rest of the route, another 4 or 5 pitches after that - wasn't nearly as challenging, and we had some pretty pleasant neve to climb on all the way to the summit of Sgurr Mor.

Having not seen the sun for at least 2 months, I was really quite thrilled to top out on the summit with bright sunshine peeking through the thin layer of mist, and even producing a pretty brocken spectre for us! It was somewhat windy though, so we didn't stick around too long after having something to eat, and briskly made our way down the ridge toward the next munro (which we didn't bother with since it was getting late). Got back to the cars at nearly 6pm. It was a superb day for all.

© Hannah Vickers

Group photo....failed because of sandwich distractions!

© Hannah Vickers