As a teen, we would stop in Boux on the way back from a summer trip, for a few days before going to Font for the last week before school started.
Watching the Wads there, working this, that and the other was pretty cool, but nothing stands out these many years later.
But, there was a stupid incident and my mate Mike Halsey (just incase others know him), climbed The Runnel in Cairngorm, half blind, missing teeth and severely concussed; in a white out, in complete darkness.
Long story short, we’d driven up from Cornwall and arrived in the carpark at 14:30 ish. Young and dumb, we raced over to check the connies, for tomorrow and decided we had a half hour of light to race up The Runnel (it’s only a II or III iirc, with a long easy snow gully and a short mixed or ice pitch to the top). So we soled quickly up to the last but one pitch, then it started to snow, so we roped up and he went to lead up to the foot of the crux. There had been a couple ahead of us, on the last crux pitch, and in the snow, we’d assumed they’d finished and gone. They hadn’t, in the white out we got too close, they dislodged a hefty dinner plate of ice, Mike copped it in the mush at a serious rate of knots.
Anyway, by the time I got to him, made safe and did the first aid thing; it was almost dark. He was slipping in and out of consciousness and I figured trying to lower him multiple pitches wasn’t going to fly, because he wasn’t going to be able to make himself safe etc. So I lead out to the top with some half baked plan to haul him out, or tie off, making him safe, and running like a twat to get help (no mobile phones in those days).
Anyway, luck was in, the guys ahead had dropped a camera and were waiting to see if we’d picked it up. Mike responded to rope signals and he climbed most of the way, never completely lost it and we were only half hauling for the last ten feet.
We had to carry him down, mostly unconscious, and that was an epic, but a whole other story.