Day one of a week long trip to Mingulay, and my first time climbing in the Outer Hebridies. Francis dropped us off by boat the night before and a rather changeable day's weather greeted us. Clay and I joined Al, Malcy and several others at Guarsay Beag for our first introduction to the steep sea-cliffs of the island.
One final outing with Will, this time some multi-pitch sport climbing on the mighty Plombergstein above St. Gilgen.
As a consolation for our failures on the Großglockner, Will and I stopped by at the Kleiner Barmsteine on our way home. The south ridge was a very fun new way up to a summit I know well.
Will and I first aimed for the Glocknerwand überschreitung, then switched to the Stüdlgrat as the weather window closed, before finally turning back in the early morning with storms on the horizon and bad weather all around. Not all trips to the mountains are successful.
Will missed his flight to Munich, because he's an idiot, but we managed to salvage the rest of the first day with a very fast lap of the Postalm Klettersteig. It winds a course up a very aesthetic and moody gorge, quite different to most other routes I've done to date.
I finally persuaded Rebecca to do some climbing, so we squeezed in a half day at Lofer before the rain came. 800m of hiking for 150m of crazy water-worn limestone.
