Dug in and out on the cross-country skis!

I managed to get back home yesterday and spent all last night selecting and uploading a few of our 23Gb of Spanish climbing photos!
As Cairngorm Mountain ski area is out of bounds at the moment and needs dug out Fi and I spent the afternoon trail breaking with our Nordic skis around the upper Slochd forest loop. It was hard work but once the trails gets a bit more traffic it should be great. The lower loop still requires fit and keen trail breakers to piste a good ski track...
It's still only November and snow cover at Slochd is complete and very similar to the cover around the 21st and 23rd of December in 2009 in the two videos here and here. It's pretty deep and does requires a lot of effort but a cracking start to the winter!
Despite the difficult access and high avalanche risk in the Cairngorms all is not lost on the climbing front as many of the south facing and lower drainage venues should be developing ice if the two metre icicle fringe hanging from my gutter and lantern are anything to go by!!!