Mixed Territory

Winter climbing in Scotland demands skill and courage, plus a love of unpredictable mountains

- Cameron McNeish, Scotland's top outdoor writer,

IT was January 1994 and we were in Coire ant Sneachda in the Cairngorms.

I was frozen stiff. I had not moved in hours and my feet were like lead. A fierce wind blew into the corrie from the plateau above, and although it wasn't snowing, the gusts brought down heavy showers of spindrift that found their way down the back of my neck with each squall.

High above me, on the steep, ice-crusted crags of Aladdin's Buttress, two climbers made their way slowly upwards. Dangling beside them on a rope was Duncan McCallum, our camera operator, who was filming their every move. I suspect he was even colder than I was.

This was the less glamorous side of television. I was presenting a six-part television series called The Edge: 100 Years Of Scottish Mountaineering for BBC2, and we were into the third or fourth week of filming, all of it in uncomfortable winter conditions.

We had spent long days on Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis, Beinn Bhan in Applecross and Beinn Dearg near Ullapool, all in winter conditions, and I was definitely yearning for spring. The thought of sun-warmed rock was the stuff of dreams, but I was in the minority. Rab Anderson was a veteran of Scottish mountaineering even back then, and Graeme Ettle was one of a new breed of Scottish winter climbers, with the exuberant enthusiasm of a six-week-old Labrador pup.

Graeme Ettle's enthusiasm tends to leave you breathless as he bombards you with a mixture of forceful statements and self-belief. He talks the same way as he climbs: fast, direct and with vigour. It wouldn't be far off the mark to describe his love affair with winter climbing - particularly winter climbing in Scotland - as obsessive.

He and Rab Anderson had chosen to attempt the third ascent of a route called White Magic to demonstrate the most up-to-date techniques of Scottish winter climbing.