Oui Oui is a No

Approaching Oui Oui



I headed over to Oui Oui yesterday morning in the hope to get a route in before the AMI meeting in Aviemore that evening. We had heard rumours of it having been climbed and from the car it looked OK. However when we got to the base of the route it was running with water and looked very think in places. We spent the rest of the morning playing on the ice below the main route (about 10 meters of easy angled ice) and then hunting the rest of the crag for possible climbs, there were non. After that we retreated to Aviemore for lunch and some Christmas shopping!

The Cairngorms are still very much buried and will not be any good for climbing for a while, reports of it even being slow getting into the Ciste crag with snow shoes on! Ben Nevis has good conditions on the harder mixed routes but many of the easier routes have not had enough freeze thaw to create any solid ice or neve. One group reported poor conditions on Glovers Chimney. The best climbing at present seems to be in Glen Coe were many of the lower ice lines are coming into condition.