Garbh-bheinn; rope training. 22 January
John, Steve, Marco, Ed, Tom & Spud are off to the alps this summer and have chosen the Cuillin for their alpine training course. After a couple of hours refresher in the warmth of the Luib office we headed just up the road to Garbh-bheinn to put it into practice.
Approaching up the NW ridge of Garbh-bheinn; Red Cuillin behind.
We roped into 3 seperate parties to descend a steep gully to the foot of the north face before discussing & setting up an abseil for everyone to learn from.
Concentration as Spud tests the anchors and checks that the rope reaches!
Tom feeling confident.
Marco with the snow-clad North face of Garbh-bheinn behind.
Main-man Ed with sunlit Belig behind.
Ropework on Sgurr nan Fheadain
Matt’s Report
A great effort from the Hendersons today as they had their first Cuillin experience. The brief was learning how to use a rope for scrambling and Sgurr nan Fheadain is ideal with only 40 minutes of walking to reach the rocks. After a demonstration and some simple instructions Matt and Monique did an excellent job of looking after each other all the way up. We briefly did some standard pitching to see how slow and unsuitable this is. On the descent they learnt how to safely set up anchors and then tested these with their first ever abseil.
Despite the full range of Skye weather from sunshine to horizontal rain and exploring the relative levels of friction between the gabbro and the basalt the outing was a resounding success.
Monique leading the way
