In the winter of 1979, I got someone to act as an interim caretaker at the Harvard Cabin, and I flew across the big pond with Jon Waterman, Jim Balog, and John Thackeray to climb in Scotland. After a long travel day, we third classed the Aonach Eagach, and had a memorable night in the Clachaig Inn. A massive storm, allowed us forego our desire to pick off Glen Coe plums, and move up to Fort Williams. In the next few days we proceeded to talk a good game in the pubs, while we got drunk under the table by locals. By this time Thackeray had headed to the Alps to climb with Roy Kligfield, a gunks regular working abroad.
Eventually a decent day arrived, we hoofed it up to the Ben, watching a guy get avalanched out of a gully, which caused us to turn our attention to - "classic" - rather than "hardman" routes. Tower Ridge was climbed in the winter in the 1890s, but we found it spicy enough, and given that we were Americans and not sassenachs, we were allowed the rare privilege of a bivy in the CIC Hut.
It continued to rain, and so Jon and I headed to Chamonix, but that's another story.
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