Warm and windy cold on Friday

Still plenty of snow on the hill but warm and very windy today. The warm theme is forecast to continue until the temperature again drop below freezing on Friday and the weekend.

There was a big rise in temperature on Saturday just as the avalanche forecast finished. On Sunday there were several large avalanches reported in the heart of the Cairngorms!!!

Frozen chicken!

Today's weather! The full sized YouTube HD chicken video can be found here

What happened to the cold but good weather

Still cold but very wet and windy lower down. We were hoping for dry cold and calm weather but it's been blustery and very wet. Higher on the hill goggles have been useful in the painful northerly sleet and hail showers!! Tomorrow is the last day of the Cairngorm and Lochaber SAIS forecasts. See http://saisncairngorms.blogspot.com/ for the last of Kathy and Mark's Scottish avalanche reports blog entry of the season tomorrow!!!
We've got one place left on the Skye Cuillin Ridge course running on the 3rd to 7th May 2010 which can now be booked at the 2007 price of £375 rather than the £450 for the five days.

Cold and wintry since last weekend

It's been cold and snowy since last weekend with snow flurries and biting northerly winds even in Aviemore's high street!

Higher up in the mountains the old snow has frozen hard bringing many of the easy to mid grade routes in the Northern Corries into good winter climbing condition. All the main gullies remain complete including some of the ice lines. Watch out for the sizeable cornices on some routes. It looks as though many of the north facing crags and gully routes have been scoured although care will be required due to cross loading

Over in the Loch Avon basin the loch and the higher Loch Etchachan are still frozen from December. In the main basin most of the sun exposed south facing climbs (apart from the big gullies) had been stripped back to bare rock before the recent snow - unstable wind slab now highly likely on southerly aspects!

The fresh snow has improved the skiing where it's not been blown away and scoured down to hard ice by the strong north westerly winds!

Another sunny ski day

Sun shades and sun block and yet another great ski day once the snow softened...!

See Fi's blog for more info here.

With the clear skies and an overnight frost the snow on high northerly aspects remained very firm until early afternoon.

On a side note if you are looking for a lovelly one bed-roomed flat near Edinburgh and the conservation village of East Linton have a look here

Mid AND late April snow!

Over the last week the snow has been firm in the mornings but softening by the afternoon.

The main climbing gully lines are still all complete with some thickish ice and sagging cornices in places! The buttresses lines are now black but with snowy ledges, approaches and finishes.

The plateau has complete snow cover and great ski touring. On piste there's still good skiing on the upper and middle runs. The lower ski and the corrie off-piste runs to the carpark are now patchy and require heather hopping and walking.

The weekend and next weeks forecast is for the return of colder weather and more snow!!!

Another hot day but getting colder again

A view of the Northern Corries from Loch Morlich. Still good snow cover and skiing despite the high temperatures. On the video above you can just see the section of snow that has now avalanched off the lower section of the 'Great Slab' in Coire an Lochain.

Another beautiful day + yesterdays video

Yesterdays Cairngorm to Ben MacDui ski touring video above can be viewed full screen on YouTube here

The skiers on the video in Pinnacle Gully have posted a detailed photo report on WinterHighland here

Suberb ski touring conditions

Firm snow this morning before it softened to give good early morning piste skiing.
An early lunch then up and over Cairngorm for some brilliant off piste runs on the southern slopes before we headed over to Ben MacDui.
We met George P on Cairngorm and several other people we knew on MacDui's summit - no pretending to my GP that I'm resting my knackered knees now!

Great views acroos to the Braeriach corries and the crown walls and avalanche debris.
Returning via a fantastic virgin powder bowl we then contouring round above Loch Avon resisting the very strong urge to ski down and down and down to Loch Avon...
Into Coire Domhain and a quick check on the corniced Half a Gully (Point Five!) and the Goat Track before Fi convinced me to to head back.
However the steep slopes overlooking the moraine ridge bathed in golden evening sunlight strongly beckoned! A slightly worrying descent with large snowballs and snow slides following us down on the sun warmed slope!!
We then traversed back into the ski area on weary legs for the final descent to the car both well and truly knackered!
Lots of video and photos (at least 184!) of the still frozen Loch Avon basin crags, the stunning Brariach corries and the Coire an lochain glacier tomorrow!

Sticky snow and crevasses!

Another ski day! Cloudy skies overnight and during the day meant softer and stickier snow. The best ski runs were the high steep ones which had good spring snow.

There's still generaly good snow cover but the easier runs were very sticky and very heavy on the lower mountain.

Even near summit we still managed to skin uphill without putting the skins on as the snow was so sticky!

Photo above of Coire an Lochain showing the crevasses in the embryo Scottish glacier!

A good but warm forecast for tomorrow....

The YouTube video above can be viewed here

Ski day

We try to avoid skiing or climbing during the busy school holiday periods. However with still good snow cover after the thaw and calm sunny weather we had to spent the afternoon skiing at Cairngorm Mountain!
The queues weren't as bad as feared and once the hard snow had softened by mid-day the skiing was on a surface of lovelly spring snow.
A quick few runs on the piste and a very enjoyable run down the 'East Wall' and we we headed up onto Cairngorm's summit. Then down 'Coronation Wall' into the Coire Cas which was excellent.
We ended the day by skiing over and down the Coire Laugh More bowl which had softened just enough to make it fun! See the YouTube video here
Both these runs were firm though not too icy at the top and with lovely silky snow on the lower halves.
On the upper mountain you can still ski anywhere from Cairngorms summit with barely a rock in sight.
The return from Coire Laugh Mor now requires a few short heather hops and a 50 metre walk to the snow fence return route to the Ciste carpark.
The coires and gully lines above 6-700 metres still have plenty of snow but the climbing buttresses are now looking fairly black.

A sheltered spot

The winds closed the ski area today but fortunately it was dry overhead - underfoot was a different matter!

With high gusting southerly winds and a thaw being forecast we headed for a sunny sheltered spot.

Plenty of opportunity to look at navigation timing through thigh deep snow drifts and submerged tracks - 50 minutes a kilometre!

Lunch near the site of the old 'Stables shelter ' then a look at emergency ropework and security on steep ground on a steep slope of old hard snow.

On our slosh back the tracks and streams were flooded in many places and I was thankful of my over gaiters.

The low level snow has melted back from the forest trails but there's snow a plenty on the hills above 600 metres.

Whiteout then sunout!

Two and a half hours of hard slog through deep snow in a whiteout to get into Coire an t-Sneachda this morning.
We navigated our way into the coire sticking to the winding trail before taking a more direct line to our snowhole site through knee deep snow.
We talked about how easy it was to fall through a cornice in the current white out conditions and Neal gave an impromptu demo... Fortunately the landing was soft and ideally placed for digging our emergency snow shelters!
I had more or less given up hope of seeing anything until around 2.00 pm when the clouds parted and the sun shone.
The coire was stunning with vast areas of deep virgin snow everywhere. Half an hour later several groups of off-piste skiers had made there way over to the coire and where whooping there way down the virgin powder from the plateau, 'windy col' and even Aladdin's Couloir. See the YouTube video here.
A few climbers headed up Goat Track and possibly Red Gully but other than that the coire was fairly empty.
Many of the climbs are banked out with the Mirror Direct almost completely buried under the snow!

Easter Winter Skills

The main roads are more or less clear now and there's plenty of snow for forest and mountain skiing. Walking and trail breaking are hard going away from the well trodden trails and it took us almost an hour to cover less than a kilometre!
I didn't take the camera as I wasn't expecting such good weather. I was expecting heavy snow and poor vis but by mid-day it had turned into another warm and sunny day. We looked at avalanche assessment, route choice and ice axe and crampon use.
Fi has been out with the last of our winter's MoD adventurous training course for the Royal Navy and has a full report here