Tunnocks Entrance Rig
Anthony
Headed up to Tunnocks with enough rope for the entrance pitch and maybe Caramel Catharsis as well, plus drill in case entrance rig fettling was required. I rigged down following the trail of reflectors which made finding the bolts easy, making only minimal changes to the 2014 rig. There was a substantial pile of snow at the first choss slope (completely bare last year as I recall) and also at other points lower down. At the second choss slope, I spent a while swinging around with skyhooks to see if I could find a way to avoid it completely, eventually concluding that it would be very acrobatic for little gain. I put in an extra bolt for the next descent to replace the Y-hang with bolts miles up in the air on the far wall with a Y-hang on the near side of the drop with an immediate deviation off the far wall. Continued down until the trail of reflectors seemed to indicate an airy-fairy route across the wall. I elected to descend directly to the floor which was covered in relatively fresh snow. There is still some very old ice down there which would make the original route very tedious. Ducks on Ice is open, however, albeit with a higher snow level than I recall from last year. Mark descended the snow slope and discovered an enormous ice stal hanging like the Sword of Damocles right above the way on. Something needed to be done about this, so we retreated to plan our next move.