No 3 Buttress 12.01.08

Another day on the Ben and what a glorious day sunny and cold! All the Ski Centres in Scotland open today and most of the lifts!

I seriously considered a day on planks but decided that the whole of Scotland would also be queing for the car park so stuck with the climbing plan.






We headed up to Number 3 buttress and found it not to busy passing teams heading up to ledge route and up the curtain.

A reasonable amount of debris under neath number 4 gully keep us aware of the large amounts of new snow.

Two teams on Green gully when we arrived and we headed along to have a look at two step corner our intended rout for the day.

The corner looked thin but a had a very promising start to the first pitch. I headed up but was forced out left as the corners were hardly iced at all. We found a great variation out left overlooking a team starting up No 3 buttress route with a lovely icy second pitch following the turfy and rocky end of the first.














Simon Belayed at the side of the platform. With the team on butress route belayed at the top of the first snow ramp.


We had a look at Quickstep and the upper section of two step corner but finally decided the continuation of the buttress route was the was to go. Turned out even this was badly lacking in ice required to pull up onto the smaller platform.



A Quick lead up on Northern Corries style rocky rigde saw us on the summit. The last belay was in a great position looking across Knuckle duster and Sioux wall towards the Secret with both pitches in full view.

Quick exit down No 4 and back to the car for the Drive home.

Forecast is for a thawing couple of days and hopefully lots of ice building for the end of the week. Hopefully another last visit to the Ben on Thursday before I head For the Alps on Saturday morning.

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