Equinox: Carn Etchachan

Andy and I spent much of the morning fully orientating ourselves with the upper cliff of Carn Etchachan on magical mystery tour. Still a morning well spent as the face is full of various chimneys, gullies and buttresses, that take some working out on your first visit.

As for conditions, what a difference 3km as the crow flies and a couple of hundred metres of altitude make. The snow was useless today, sugary crustry crud that just needed removing before you could climb. I don’t think either of us found a placement in snow. The neve and first time placements of yesterday were replaced with scraping and blind faith.

Anyway with that said we headed up Equinox VI 6, the climbing was both hard and bold, well for me anyway. Andy pulled out a fine lead of the slabby second pitch in particular. By 3pm and with still 40m? of climbing to go we decided to bail and try to get off the upper face in daylight. The snow conditions was simply making the climbing to difficult to go fast.
So two and half pitches and little to show for our effort, but the climbing was good and the place is now well and truly logged in the memory maps for next time.

Andy on the first chimney pitch.