The Cobbler

Gordon, Graham and I left Glasgow this morning at the early time of 05:30 to head to the cobbler with the intention of doing SE ridge. Arriving at the car park at 06:30 we packed up the bags and split the gear…upon which in my lapse packing the night before I realised for the first time ever I forgot my harness! What an idiot! Nevertheless with a bit of ingenuity I reckoned I could make a pretty robust harness from slings at the base of the crag. We set off with the head torches, reaching the top of the tree-lined path to the fields just as the sun came up, revealing a most spectacular sunrise against crystal clear skies and snow on the ground. 

Compared to Gordon and Brian’s trip the week before there was a big strip of the snow, with the ridge clearly being in more summer than winter nick. We therefore headed to do Chockstone Gully into Great Gully. This proved cracking fun with Gordon leading the former and Graham the latter with a tasty finish off the left of the top gully on fickle ice but frozen turf. Good moves with a tasty pull up into it. Admittedly in both there wasn’t as much snow as I’ve seen in pictures but still more than enough for a good climb. We topped out into a ferocious wind coming in from the north, a marked contrast from the warm and calm south side. 

I was apprehensive about climbing given the 2013 accident I’ve not still fully mentally recovered from, but it’s good to keep ticking away at it. The lads then did another route up to a pretty big cornice they traversed around and we were down and back in Glasgow for 18:00.