Moonlight Symphony – An Ascent of Centre Post Direct, Steve Christian.  Feb 2011

So there we were Phil, Stu and I, three and half pitches off the summit of Creag Meagaidh, 300 metres up Centre Post Direct, at 4pm on the 6th of January. Darkness is falling as I set off on a grade V icefall, in an attempt to overtake the two pairs in front who were holding us up. I manage to duck underneath the traversing rope of the first pair, avoiding the entangling mess, and front point my way up the vertical blue ice, heaving and breathing at the effort. I enter a vertical ice corner and the bridging opportunity gives my aching calves a brief respite. Hanging off my wrists I manage to get my second ice screw in just as one of the axes pops. “Shit” I breathe, but my bridged stand holds firm and I sigh as the ropes clip into the extender on the ice screw. Thwack, thwack, kick, kick the monotony of movement is only heightened by the burning in my calves and shoulders. The ground just above is promising an easier angle but is still another few moves away. Fatigue is overcome by will power to make it to the easier section and I surge upwards and get my feet onto snowy ground, allowing a brief rest to replenish the reserves. Three more metres and I am nose up against a rock buttress. An insitu peg allows a quick belay to be set up, backed up by a small wire placement. As I look down Stuart and Phil, perched on a snowy ledge on a buttress on the opposite side of the gully, have head torches already fitted to their helmets. I smile at the forethought and expectation of darkness. “Safe Stuart”, echoes around the gully. I take in the rope and Phil informs me that the party just in front is abseiling from above. This means that their rope is now crossing over ours, and the ropes of the traversing party, whose ropes also cross over ours. The likelihood of spaghetti is high and Phil and Stuart rightly stay put as climbers’ abseil by into the twilight. I wait patiently and retrieve my head torch affixing it to my helmet. Stuart drops a glove as he struggles with the belay and it disappears into the abyss. It’s getting very dark, which hasn’t escaped my notice, and Phil makes it to the belay in the gathering gloom. We quickly discuss options before deciding to traverse across the buttress into a side gully that offers the best way to the top. Phil clicks on the head torch and sets off delicately picking his way across the turfy ledges carefully loading each step before transferring his weight onto it. He disappears from sight, only the running of the rope and the occasional distant pool of light being reminders of his presence. After a while rope movement accelerates and I judge he has reached easier ground. His signal of safety now means that Stuart, still perched thirty metres below, will have to climb the icefall in the dark. With all the excitement and the falling darkness, I have failed to notice that the moon is making an effort to pierce through the mist enshrouding the face. The translucent light allows belaying to take place without the need for a head torch. The view out through clearings in the mist is spectacular. The highlands are bathed in luminescence and I gaze in awe. Stuart arrives at the belay and I casually inform him that he needs to traverse the buttress into the side gully, where he should set up a deadman belay. He moves off hooking and whacking the turf above to give him purchase across the buttress and disappears. It is now my turn. I untie from the belay and consider using a back rope on the insitu peg. The potential for entanglement leads me to discount it and I set off on the traverse. The first moves flow easily with good turf but then I arrive at the bottleneck. Delicately I torque my way round a protruding rock until forced to duck underneath an overhung wall. I am traversing on a fringe of heather above the abyss, trying to reach distant turf with my axes. It is out of reach. I shuffle, stooped now under the leaning wall, which pushes me into the void. There are no axe placements but those at floor level and the crawling motion continues for several moves. Any inappropriate tug on the rope now will send me spinning into space somewhere. The pieces of the movement fall into place and I stand carefully on the far side of the wall, stepping onto easier ground. Steep snow stretches above and I continue upwards into the moonlight. Two more pitches of steep snow ice lead us to success, the top of the buttress. A cold breeze greets us and we pack frozen ropes and equipment into rucsacs. The misty curtain has frozen on us a sheen of ice and I am surprised that I feel warm. The moonlight is not enough for us to see unaided, and three pools of gloomy light set off on a compass bearing through the cloud. We cross many foot tracks but I am determined to keep on course to navigate our way off down to The Window, a gash like Col in the ridge, which is the key to descent back to the corrie. We hit steep ground and drop quickly until our preset timing is met. We ponder over the map resetting the compass bearing so that we will hit The Window. I have misgivings about our predicament now, somewhere on the wild side of the mountain, in a misty darkness. Not finding The Window will leave us wandering aimlessly. We restudy the map. There is a sudden realisation that the tracks in the snow we crossed were those which follow the edge of the cliff top towards The Window. Reluctantly we retrace our steps, grinding back up the steep ground until we reach the tracks again. We recheck the direction of tracks and follow them, still using the compass for support. Slowly we loose height and eventually, below in the gloom, the gap in the ridge is revealed. We cross through The Window and back onto the east side of the mountain. Before us stretches the fully moonlit approach valley merging into snow covered highlands. The brooding, seamed crag falls away below us and what was a distant dream of life tomorrow becomes reality.