Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

An aptly gloomy Sunday on Beinn Udlaidh , chasing the last of the ice as the big thaw hit and moist clouds and mist swirled around the corrie. It wasn't too bad. The ice was all still there, with the rarer stuff still touching down, but it was on its way out today and won't last unless it freezes this week. Water was running down the icicles, soaking us off the overhangs and everything was becoming a fragile chandelier apart from the thicker fat blue stuff. Quartzvein Scoop was still very thick but sugary coatings of melting snow made the tops and shallower bays a nightmare. A refreeze this week might repair things... Land of Make Believe

Ardvorlich Hidden Upper Cascad e Though I knew of the Loch Lomond falls at Inverarnan and Eas Ruaridh having been climbed and often in nick in a cold winter such as this, I'd not heard of the Ardvorlich cascades having been climbed, though I expect they may have been in distant cold winters such as '96, '79, '67 or even the big chill of 1946? They can just about be spotted from the roadside at Ardvorlich B&B just after Inveruglas on the A82 on Loch Lomondside, just above the 400m contour. We hiked up there in deep snow, an exhausting hour's trek hauling up the square-holed wire fence to the obvious cascades which looked blue and chewy and inviting. As usual in winter, the climbing was not as steep as it appeared from the roadside, but two very good lines can be climbed on the lower falls in two pitches to a tree belay at the top, from where a bonus surprise awaits: a frozen enclosed gorge with tumbling blue ice, its central feature a frozen blue chamber of ice w...