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!
1 comment:
just found this vid in you tube and after watch it im positive that I am the skier in it! sure i am the the first skier in the vid going down alladins. checked with my own photos and i defanatly skied alladens that day and I can remember getting fresh tracks down it. which means that it is me since there was no outher tracks. just wandering if you noticed that in the bit of vid thats been cut out when I was trying to get in to alladins at the mirror direct i nearly fell and took ages to cross? the other skier was a mouintaineer who I had just me at the top of the Couloir. I was going to be skiing it with my dad but after me nearly falling off alladens he decided not to go in and went back round passed jacobs ladder and down the normal face. the other skier was up to ski his first Couloir. cant rember his name. if i rember rightly he used his ice axe and crampons to get passed the mirror direct and up to the pinnical?
once in to alladins it was lovely knee deep powder on an ice base.
just wandering if it defanatly is me in the vid????
cheers jonno. :)
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