Shambles on the Shelterstone

Just more than a year ago a finished what was one of the most fantastic experiences of my climbing life, I finished the Cairngorm mega classic route "the Needle". The whole day from car to car took me and Sam Wainwright about 10-11 hours, it was was near perfect! I was tested emotionally and physically and experienced a wide range of emotions on the route. All in all it was incredibly rewarding for me, as a result I was desperate to get back to Shelterstone crag and climb on it again.

The more than impressive Shelterstone Crag

My first thought was to do "Steeple", supposedly the best line on the cliff and one of the best climbs in the country and in fact I still plan on climbing it later this year, In the mean time I thought I'd settle for doing the less classic "Citadel" (VS 4c). The climbing that resulted from this decision was frankly awful, It turned out to be the worst climb I've ever done! Hooray!

Over the preceding couple of days I regularly scanned the MWIS forecast in the hope that the weather would be good enough to tackle such a lengthy and committing route. The weather looked clear, the chance of any precipitation was very unlikely. The only negative was it looked a little cold for the day. I figured if I packed a few extra layers I'd be totally fine (don't worry I didn't get caught in a blizzard that isn't where the day went wrong). 

My partner for this particular adventure was the one and only Stevie Rutledge, Who is my longest standing friend as he was practically waiting for me when I entered the world. It was just like old times, running off and having quality adventures!

Mr Rutledge

We had a pretty relaxed start, rolling out of bed at half 8, having no timetable to fit to other than to be out of the Cairngorms before it got dark (about 10 o'clock at night) we felt the slight lie in was justified. 

The skies looked good all around, admittedly it was fairly cloudy but they were all the white, fluffy and friendly kind. Temperature wise it was pretty warm too. all in all a perfect day to hit up the Shelterstone!

We approached over 1141 and onto the plateau and then down into the loch Avon basin between stag rocks and hells lum.

First glimpses of Shelterstone crag, still a little lingering snow

We arrived at the routes base in good time and looked up at the route we were to take. I immediately decided that route finding would not be a problem. All the features mentioned in the guide were present and easily visible. That was exactly the problem though, the "grassy cracks" were definitely there and were certainly grassy. At the time I didn't think too much about how it resembled mossy weetabix. 

I headed up the mossy cracks and unsurprisingly absolutely everything was loose. I tottered up and up trying not to move the loose rocks in case they tumbled onto Stevie. Not only was the climbing loose and Grassy It was also quite badly protected. In the first 50 metre pitch I placed a grand total of 3 pieces of protection, on top of this I'm not sure how many of them would've taken a fall. 

Thankfully despite the awful quality of the rock the climbing was fairly easy for the most part and I soon made it to the top of the first pitch and was bringing Stevie up behind me. At this point I wasn't too bothered by the bad rock as supposedly the climbing improved with height. I soon set off on pitch 2 and It was much the same, except this time I could find nowhere to build a belay, so I meandered off left to find somewhere to call and end to the pitch, Once again I had only placed 3 pieces in about 50 metres of climbing. Naturally due to the poor nature of the rock and protection I was a little scared and had pretty much stopped having fun. It wasn't really climbing, more like extreme botany. I could see by looking at Stevie that he wasn't having a great time climbing vertical grass either.

Looking down the route

As a result of meandering off the route to find a belay I was now having great difficulty trying to get back onto the route and instead opted to climb the more appealing looking rock above. For once the rock was solid, however the run-outs were still large and the difficulty of the climbing drastically increased. At this point I decided that the climb wasn't really worth it anymore, despite the fact we were making good time neither of us was having fun and I think we were both a little scared by how loose everything was I decided we should probably bail instead of continuing up. Despite the guidebooks assertions the climbing didn't look to improve much above us so I figured bailing was probably the best idea.

"Too much choss!!"

I dithered around on some hard moves far above my last gear wondering what to do, despite having made the decision to bail there was at that moment nowhere for me to bail from, I was going to have to make it to the next belay ledge before I could bail. Stevie began to second but had serious difficulties trying to get past the hard moves on the diversion I had made, Unfortunately he couldn't get past them.

In the end I had to lower Stevie back down, I then set up an abseil using the tat I had bought only the day before to get back down to Stevie. Thankfully I encountered no problems with ropes getting stuck and continued to abseil down to the crags base which was reached in just short of 3 full abseils, meaning we'd climbed about 160 metres of the 270 metre route before bailing.

Follow the grass to the top

Despite having failed to climb the route and the climbing probably being the worst I've ever done I actually had a great day! I always knew it was going to be an adventure after all and It was great to get back out. This coupled with the fact that I actually got to use the bailing techniques which I'd learned many moons ago meant for me at least it was a highly educational day, and as a result of getting us both safely back down to the bottom I feel even more competent in the mountains. It's reasons like these that mean It's sometimes good to get completely shut down by a climb. If everything always went swimmingly I guess you'd never learn anything.

The single biggest thing I learnt however is that just because something Is a winter classic does not automatically mean it will be spectacular in summer too. I'll definitely have to go back and do this some time (though maybe after a longer dry spell and after I've climbed everything else). 

If nothing else It was great to spend quality time with an old friend in some of the most spectacular scenery in the country. So I guess this also was a very rewarding day, just perhaps in a slightly different way

Shelterstone Panorama