INVERNOOKIE

A bright blue sky and more importantly a windless morning greets us as we park the car in the Coire Cas car park at the Cairngorm ski centre. I use the word windless in a relative sense, because in this part of the world that condition rarely, if ever, applies. I have driven from Edinburgh on what seemed a fine day, arriving here to find that I was unable to get the car door open because of the wind and, on another occasion, I witnessed stones being lifted off the ground and smashing car windscreens – all we can say with certainty is, that on this occasion, it is relatively windless.


The day’s target is ‘Invernookie.’ No, nothing sexual, simply the name of a winter climb in Coire an t- Sneachda one of the Northern Corries of the Cairngorms. It may come as a surprise to the uninitiated to find that winter climbing is not simply a case of starting at the bottom of a face and getting to the top. The ice-clad cliffs of Scotland are covered in very well documented ‘routes’ of varying degrees of difficulty, all mapped out in the relevant guidebook for the area concerned, a process which has been going on for over a hundred years. In the old days the naming of these routes was a fairly straightforward business, for example, routes like ‘Central Gully’ and ‘Left Edge’ were simply denoting position on the face; while ‘Raeburn’s Gully’ and ‘Patey’s Route’ were named after the first ascentionists. Today we range from the esoteric such as ‘The Glass Bead Game’ on Beinn Dorain to the sexually punning ‘Hoarmaster’ in the neighbouring Coire Lochain, and ‘Invernookie’ - well who knows?

The great attraction of the Northern Corries of the Cairngorms as a winter playground for climbers lies in the fact that when you get out of your car, (wind permitting!) you are already at 1600ft and an hour or so of brisk walking can see you at the foot of the climbs. Somewhat different from the days of the pioneers when the nearest roadhead was ten miles away!

There is not a lot of snow on the ground and as we slip and skid our way along the well worn but icy track that leads away from the car park towards the climbing area, we become aware of a new feature in the landscape. The Cairngorm Funicular is no longer a political argument - it is a fact. The concrete track snaking its way up the hill will doubtless improve the rate of uplift for skiers and it could be argued that at least it is an improvement to an existing development rather than an intrusion into a totally new area, as was so long on the cards with the Lurcher’s Gully proposals.

Arriving in the inner corrie we walk easily over the frozen lochan where, this time last year, I took an early bath, breaking through thin ice cunningly concealed under a layer of powder snow which, needless to say, led to a quick cancellation of our first appointment with ‘Invernookie.’ We make our way down into the bowl below the north face in order to avoid traversing a treacherous boulder field and here,on the steepening snow slopes below the climbs, we pass a number of groups practising the rudiments of ice-axe braking under the watchful eye of instructors from Glenmore Lodge Outdoor Centre and the other ‘Guiding’ organisations which, long established in Europe, have now become a prominent feature of Scottish Mountaineering.

Our route lies over to the right on the steep face below the Fiacaill Ridge much beloved of calender photographers and those beginning to cut their teeth in the often unforgiving arena of Scottish Winter climbing . Another twenty minutes of uphill toil brings us into the foot of our route where, donning harnesses and crampons, we rope up amid showers of fine snow or ‘spindrift’ being blown off the plateau 300ft above.

‘Invernookie,’ like most of the climbs in the Northern Corries, is what is termed a mixed climb in that it is not achieved on ice alone but on a mixture of snow, iced up rock and frozen turf. Leading the first section or pitch with my companion solidly belayed to a metal ‘piton’ hammered into the rock below, I find conditions to be rather thin. There is little ice, which means that much of the time progress is on frozen turf and, when that is not available, height is won by the slightly more precarious use of ice axe blades torqued into cracks in the rock.

I suppose to the layman this all sounds rather improbable but the truth of the matter is that ‘Invernookie’ gave up it’s secrets in three relatively straight forward pitches, the only really tense moment being when my crampon became entangled in a sling below me at a particularly inopportune moment. In order to extricate myself, my ageing bones had to perform what I imagine to be third degree Hatha Yoga while suspended above a considerable drop from the point of one axe! I often think that a distinct lack of imagination is a positive attribute in Winter climbing.

We had been climbing in the shade of the face for an hour and a half and it was a joy to be out on the ridge and into the relative warmth of the sunshine again. The walk round the rim of the corrie in the roseate glow of late afternoon is wonderful. The sculpted cornices overhanging the face, which, in another few weeks, will reach prodigious proportions, are just beginning to form and pose no great problem to the climber who pops his head up in front of us having climbed the last pitch of the ‘Crotched Gully’ route.

As we approach the line of the headwall of Coire- Cas we are presented in graphic fashion with the paradox that is the Northern Corries. Looking south we see the low sun illuminating the raw beauty and silent arctic wilderness of the Cairngorm plateau, while the view immediately north leads the eye back to the ski area, to the car park, to restaurants and to noise. However I must admit that I’m not adverse to a good days skiing and perhaps the Northern Corries is, as Voltaire was wont to say, “ The best of all possible worlds.”