The Traverse to Crowberry Tower

It’s been a busy few months. Between work commitments, visits to family, car troubles and trying to keep up some semblance of a social life, I’ve not had much time to go out and spend time in the mountains just for fun. 

Speaking to my friend Bart, it turns out he was in much the same place. Maybe we’ve finally become adults. We decided this wouldn’t do. So, last Friday after work we jumped in the car and headed north, to Bridge of Orchy. 

As anyone who’s done the West Highland Way will know, just across the titular bridge, there is a lovely grassy spot, right next to the river, to camp. As sods law dictates, it was a lovely rainy night when we arrived. The tents went up in record time, a spare roll mat was dug out for Bart (who had decided to bring his punctured one), and we got under canvas to have our dinner and a look at some maps. 

Saturday dawned slowly, the wintery morning sun struggling to break through the fog that hung in the glen. Which was perfect for us as we were both happy to have a lie-in. 

After faffing about, drinking coffee and admiring the beauty of it all (mornings in Bridge of Orchy never fail to be eerily, mistily breathtaking), we eventually had our daysacks, and ourselves, in the car and on our way to Glen Etive. 

Managing to sneak the car onto a grassy bank, with absolutely no part of it sticking out into a passing place, we decanted and had our first look at the route. 

The Traverse to Crowberry Tower, is a long and wonderfully defined gully, rising from left to right across the southern flank of Buachaille Etive Mor. Like a giant slash across the face of the mountain, it is an almost unmissable route. A grade 2 (i.e. relatively easy) winter route, it is surrounded but much more serious climbing on all sides. I found the route in Gary Smith’s wonderful guidebook ‘Scotland’s Winter Mountains with one axe’ and, as he puts it, “there is no scope for abandoning this… it needs to be either completed or reversed”.

A short walk along a faint trail brought us to the foot of the climb. This in itself was a wonder as normally to get to the foot of anything in Scotland you’re looking at a long, muddy, heather bashing route in. 

Although we were hoping for a full-on winter day out, the ice axes strapped to the outside of our packs, and the crampons threatening to poke holes in everything inside them, would sadly stay where they were. The snowline was up around 750m and we were not destined to reach it. 

What we were faced with was hundreds of meters of scrambling. Whilst it was relatively easy climbing, there were frequent patches of wet grass and loose scree, both a slippery nightmare which made us all too aware of how long we would be sliding for if we did lose our footing.

It was, in short, incredible fun. Route finding in the broken morasse of the mountain's face was an engaging challenge, the views down the glen, across to Clach Leathad and Rannoch Moor were stunning and the scrambling involved just the right amount of “oooh god” without feeling like we were actually going to die.

That is until we got to the overhanging rock. About halfway up the route, this big overhang is a good marker to show you’re on the right track. Unfortunately, what it overhangs is a four or five meter traverse across icy grass. Icy grass which sloped away below us at an ungodly angle, into a gully that seemed to drop all the way back down to sea level.

Beyond the traverse was a steep section of scree, leading on to the first proper snow slope. If we made it across the traverse we were unsure if we would be able to climb the scree slope, and if we couldn’t get up the scree, there was no way we would be lucky enough to make it across the icy traverse a second time. 

I say lucky because that’s what we would have to be. Some idiot, definitely not me (I one hundred percent blame Bart), had decided we wouldn’t need a rope for this route. So it remained hanging safely on my office wall, ready to protect me the next time I have to write a particularly dangerous email. 

We stopped on a promontory, a tongue of rock sticking out of the cliff looking like a good place to christen a baby lion who would one day be king. Just above us was the overhanging rock and the icy traverse we would have to make.

We ate chocolate and stared at the cliff in silence for a while, then agreed there was not a chance we were going across. 

We are always balancing the risk of something happening against the consequences if it does. The consequences of slipping had been fairly high all day, but now the risk was rising too, the scales were tipping in an unpleasant direction. 

Even with a rope, any fall would have meant a big pendulum-like swing into the walls of the gully below, without one it was just bloody stupid.

Plus, it was starting to rain.

Thankfully, Bart, like myself, is a big fan of not falling off things and dying. So he readily agreed to head back down. 

Downclimbing is a generally more hairy sport than climbing up. On the way up you can see where you’re putting your feet. On the way up,you very rarely have to dangle your legs into the void whilst hanging off an already slightly dodgy looking handhold, slowly lowering yourself and hoping that your toes will make contact with something before you run out of arm.

Once again, we had a genuinely fun time. 

There’s a model of learning which places experiences into three categories. At one end we have “Comfort”, i.e. what we are doing is so easy I’m coasting along not having to think, at the other there’s “Panic” i.e. I’m so full of adrenaline I can barely stop myself from peeing my pants, let alone focus on learning a new skill. But, right in the middle we have “Stretch”. This is where I’m being challenged, but not in a total flap. This is where learning happens, and where you generally have the most fun. 

Downclimbing several hundred meters of technically pretty easy, but also wet, chossy and unprotected, mountainside, with a long way to tumble if something goes wrong, had me firmly in “Stretch”.

The whole day had required us to stay focused, to move carefully but consistently (the winter days are short and we didn’t want to get stuck half way up in the dark), the hours passed fast and we didn’t have to think, or worry, about anything other than the next handhold and when to stop for chocolate and pork pies (not mixed, that would be terrible…). We didn’t make the top, but neither of us really cared. We both just needed to get out of town and mess about on a mountain for a while.