Winter is here!

We've just gotten back from 3 fantastic days in the Cairngorms Winter Mountaineering and Ski Touring.

It had been a bit of an 'over keen, there might be snow' type trip, but as it turned out the heavens opened, the temperature fell and we had a great time.

Day 1

We headed into Gen Feshie, south of Aviemore, and went up Carn Ban Mor 1052. It was a cold and very windy day, with googles on for the duration, winds gusting 60mph and at the top hardly any visibility...great stuff!

We then headed north and up onto Sgor Gaoith 1118 and on again to Sgoran Dubh Mor 1111. The thing with a lot od Scottish Hills is they are such a long way from the car, so once you are near them, it's daft not to get as many in as you can. The problem is, you end up doing a 22km day!

The hill was in got winter nick from 500m upwards, not much deep snow, but some neve and lots of ice and frozen ground.

Day 2

Day 2 was a solo day for me, Ali was having some retail therapy and a rest. These can sometimes be tough, finding the energy to do a big day on your own, but with pretty challenging conditions, I found plenty of motivation pitting my skills against some typically Scottish winds and blizzards.

I started at the bottom ski carpark near Glen More and headed into Coire na Ciste, thinking I'd get shelter from the westerly's. I got shelter, but also deep snow and deeper heather! Several hours of battling got me up onto Cnap Coire na Spreidhe 1151 and into a white out with 50mph winds and about -10'c with wind chill, brilliant!

Then , with some proper navigation needed, I headed up to the top of the mighty Cairngorm 1245, and as the clouds lifted was treated to some amazing views.

The weather station popped into life at one point, raising its electronic wizardary above it's shelter to measure the crazy weather (it read 54mph and -6'c without wind chill, the link to the website is http://cairngormweather.eps.hw.ac.uk/archive.htm)

Day 3

With Ali recovered and a little more snow fallen, we thought we'd risk a little ski touring foray around the back of Cairngorm to a hill called Bynack More 1090. We managed just about to ski from Glenmore Lodge up to the Ryvoan Bothy and up onto the flat plateau below the final 1km onto the top. To say we were slightly battered by this point would be an understatement and having just done 10km to get here and only having 2hrs of daylight left we made the tough, but sensible decision to turntail and ski back. I'd thought we were going to have all sorts of problems sking back down the hill with it's modest amounts of snow and copious amounts of heather...but no bother. You couldn't turn, but hey, who needs to turn!

Then to cap it all, we get home and the Lakes is white! So i'm off out to have more adventures i the Lakes!