The Resurrection - Sgurr mor Fannaich - NW Scotland

Yesterday Paul, Garry and I headed up to the North West to climb The Resurrection III ****, a cold climb tick and fantastic face climbing. The drive north was stunning with clear skies and snowy hills, the car was full of anticipation as An Teallach came into view. On arriving at the car park we were lucky enough to have a fantastic sunrise view of the mighty mountain. 

To our left we could look across at the face of Sgurr mor Fannaich where our route lay - 'it doesn't look far' was the quote from each of us...

The route goes up the centre of the face - and has a great alpine feel to it.

A few hours later having had some interesting river crossings - all the water from the previous two days of thawing still pumping down the rivers.

Great views across to Beinn Dearg

We were still being treated to great views when we arrived at the bottom of the face, I headed up the first pitch which was straight forward snow ice climbing. The next two pitches were up the first snowfield and had a real alpine face feel to them, not steep but serious terrain with limited protection. 

The cloud and spindrift began to build and snow began to fall - not what we were expecting, Garry was disappointed as he was keen to take lots of photos of this classic cold climbs tick. We continued up the face finding mediocre belays - had there been a few more days of cold after the thaw I suspect there would have been fatter ice and screw belays would have been possible in many places. 

Garry setting of up the final pitch

From the belay you wonder where it goes, but with faith in the guidebook description 'head diagonally right and then straight up, turf gear is the only protection, the cornice can be big, a long pitch 55m, belay on summit cairn', it is a straight forward pitch protected by warthogs and bulldogs, today there was no cornice just hero neve to the top and the best belay on the route on the summit cairn!

As we descended from the summit the cloud began to lift again giving us a little view of summits around, it looks like Paul and I will have to return to see the panorama Garry described to us from his visit Munro bagging last year. If Garry has managed to capture some good images they will be on his website here.