Snow anchors and shelters

A good calm day today and a lot brighter than expected. With lots of easy accessible deep snow drifts, crevasses and cornices we had a good day looking at snow climbing techniques, belays, basic dynamic ropework and emergency snow shelters. Great climbing condition in the Corries and a great climbing forecast for the coming week...

The winter belays and ropework video above can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRcLwOW1W4s
Fi and Neil are out with our Adventurous Training groups all this week. More photos and details here

Milder with great whiteout conditions for nav

Good winter skills conditions especially for navigation on our advanced Winter Mountaineering course...! Tomorrow the freezing level drops so the snow should freeze hard above 600 metres.
YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTYYyj0_Ni0

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

If you can't see the YouTube video above you can view it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUC0dIq9GX8

Great climbing but Nil visibility

A lot windier and more wintry than expected today with challenging navigation (white out) into our climb, on the plateau and on the way back out again! I was guiding Mark today when Fi and Alan followed us up Goat Track gully once the belays had been excavated! It was bitterly cold with a strong icy up draught though the climbing conditions were really superb on rimed up neve and great ice. The only other climb we could actually see was Red Gully and that looked superb too and quite banked on the first ice pitch. It was snowing heavily around Aviemore this evening... More on Fi's blog here