A nice day with good vis for a change!

A calm sunny start to the day saw Mark and I following Jules and the 'Lodge' teams into the sparkling white Northern Corries - with our shades on rather than goggles for a change...

Last night there was some overnight silky fresh snow before the skies cleared to give a good frost.

We headed into Coire an t-Sneachda to look at more ropework, belays and to see where we had been yesterday! Our route headed up between Jacob's Edge and Hidden Chimney before joining the later at the crux chockstones. The fresh snow surface was soft but really good as long as you kicked through to the bomber underlying neve. The route including the Direct Start was well banked with good neve and ice though had a steep corniced exit - which Mark really enjoyed!

Other climbs nearbye such as The Haston line alongside were banked up and looked really straight forward as did Yukon Jack and Opening Break. Several teams including Andy N (in Central Gully) reported steep corniced exits around the Trident Gully areas and Fi didn't see anyone climbing Jacob's Ladder or the Runnel! We didn't see anyone either on the harder lines with most teams enjoying the great climbing on the classic easy to mid grade routes in the Corrie.

By mid afternoon the blue sky had faded and the winds had increased from the SE drifting large quantities of fresh snow onto northerly aspects and across the ski roads.

More photos on Fi's blog here

By Thursday the snow cover and climbing conditions will have changed somewhat from today due to the amount fresh drifting snow.

Remember to check the latest Cairngorm SAIS avalanche reports