Broad Buttress, Buachaille Etive Mor, Glen Coe
Grade 2 Scramble
29th December 2005
I suffer the long drive North from Sheffield to Glen Coe regularly. It
takes me about seven hours. I'm told that it should take six hours and
that Johnny Dawes has done it in three with one hand behind his back. With
this in mind, I bought a faster car. Now, I go faster between petrol
stations but have to keep stopping to fill up which wastes time. 'Swings
and roundabouts' as me mother says. There's an unusually straight bit on
the A82 as you zip past the Kingshouse hotel. 6km of straight-line flying
with Rannoch Moor flashing past the windscreen and the engine humming. The
straight bit finishes at a left-hand bend with the Lagangarbh climbing hut
nestled down below the road. Just before you brake for the corner, look up
and left. Towering above you is the huge bulk of one of the finest
mountains in the country - Buachaille Etive Mor. From this angle it looks
like a fairly straightforward thing, the shape is sort of, well,
mountainey. Infact, you can't see most of it and if you have a look on a
map you'll see that it's a pretty complicated mass of ridges, gullies,
corries, crags and tops oriented roughly SW-NE. Just before you brake,
you're seeing the Northern end of all this.
I hold Buachaille Etive Mor in particularly high regard. My first
proper Scottish rock climb was on the mountain's craggy North-East face
and I've climbed here every year since. The Rannoch Wall is one of the
gems of Scottish climbing. It has a collection of relatively
straightforward rock climbs in stupendous situations. The mountain has been hugely significant in the development of Scottish
climbing. The mighty Creag Dhu Mountaineering Club have their hut,
Jacksonville, at the foot of the mountain and kept an iron-grip on new
routing on its crags for many years. For those who are looking for
scrambling ground - Buachaille Etive Mor has loads of it. Curved Ridge is
the famous summer scramble but for me the scrambling interest is not vast.
The first part is OK, you do get a very good view of the rock climbs on
the Rannoch Wall, but if you're out for a scramble, you're not necessarily
looking for future rock climbs. No. At the same grade, Broad Buttress is a
better scramble. Here's my account of an ascent between Christmas and New
Year 2005.
Three of us set off from the Lagangarbh car park at quarter to nine in the
morning and headed along the good path which takes you towards the crags. The thermometer showed zero degrees and we
trudged off faster than usual to get warm. This being Scotland, the path
doesn't take you to the base of the route but there's fifteen minutes of
uphill heather-snorkling first. The rest of the
party had spent time in the Clachaig the night before and I was sure that
any pause would be taken as invitation for a sit down. The
first 30 foot of the route ascends slabs set at 45 degrees covered in
seepage lines. I imagine that
in summer they would be a minor hindrance. On this day, the seepage lines
were a thick covering of verglass and demanded a steady
approach. Once over that we climbed up left onto a broad mass of rock
where the angle steepens markedly. The rock was covered in a thin but
pernicious dusting of powder so we roped up and started to move together.
The guidebook describes going round right to avoid the steep bit but we
tackled it head on to arrive at the base of a shallow, heathery trench
slanting off rightwards. No doubt harder scrambling can be had off to the
left at a higher grade but on this day we followed the guidebook's advice
and followed the trench to it's top beneath a steep, and loose looking
rock wall. There's a tricky corner which allows the wall to be bypassed
and in big winter boots and gloves the climbing feels almost alpine. On
this part of the mountain, the rock is particularly unhelpful with all the
holds seeming to slope the wrong way. From there we headed straight on up,
passing slabs, grooves and spikes all made of the most fantastic volcanic
rock. Eventually we pulled onto a large platform covered in scree. With
the harder scrambling over we took the rope off and spent some time
enjoying the view over Rannoch Moor to the East and the mountains around
Ben Nevis. Some friends were doing Stob Ban that day and we wondered how
they were getting on. After a while the cold made itself known again and
we headed on upwards to the top of the route. Most people continue on to
the summit of Buachaille Etive Mor but we had been there the previous day
via D Gully Buttress. We looked across to Coire na Tulaich to the West and
opted for a careful traverse in. This wasn't as difficult as expected; a
mixture of frozen scree and heather with the odd short rock step took us
down to join the path back to Lagangarbh.
This short description belies the fact that Broad Buttress is a serious
undertaking and a step up in seriousness from the classic English and
Welsh scrambles such as Cneifon Arete and Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday
Crag. The buttress finishes at 900m and the top is often swathed in cloud.
Escape from the upper reaches would be very problematic and most will want
to use a rope and either pitch it or move together placing gear. Either
way, the route is only suitable for those with a good deal of
mountaineering experience gained on less serious outings. And the
following day, once you've done the main event, you could do Curved Ridge.
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