Magic Crack

With another stunning forecast, my dissertation almost complete, and the deadline 4pm on Wednesday I couldn't resist getting out climbing again.

The weather is only like this for about 3 weeks a year in the mountains and when you have a psyched partner you just have to make the most of these opportunities in Scotland. So Ross and I headed up to the Cairngorms hoping to climb Magic Crack, a four star HVS which I have wanted to do for ages...and ages and ages!

We walked in topless with trousers rolled up it was so warm and climbed the first couple of pitches in t-shirts with fleeces at the belays (we were now on the 'north face' and thus in the shade). It got slightly colder later on as the wind picked up but as the sun came round on the later pitches it became incredible once again.

We split the main pitch into two shorter pitches and Ross won rock-paper-scissors for the main finger crack pitch which was excellent and very unique, proper finger locks and just beautiful climbing. The last pitch was also excellent and we couldn't really believe we were climbing at 900m in t-shirts in March!

It was a smashing day. Quite literally as I dropped my camera from the bottom of Mess of Pottage all the way down to the boulder field :(

It's unsurprisingly not loving life right now and has a crack around half of the body. :(

Update; all is not lost, the body is repairable and amazingly the lens is undamaged! Pretty impressive stuff although I will be trying to avoid testing this again in the future!