Still plenty of snow but milder recently

The past few days have been milder with the snow gently thawing below 900 metres. Colder and clearer weather returned this afternoon and this should firm up the snowpack. Despite the milder weather and drizzle at low levels the mountain crags are still very white. The forecast for next week is for calm sunny days and frosty nights. Today we were looking at winter belays and ropework and tomorrow we're off on an overnight snowhole expedition...

See Tamsin's expedition trip reports blog here

HD Ski video!

The full sized HD version of the above YouTube ski video from the 3rd and 4th March can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RhFvmIRXvU

If you ski at Cairngorm then click here for the 'Save the Ciste' chairlift campaign website - please sign...

Another great ski day!

Another good ski day up until early afternoon when the forecast front moved in bringing poor vis and light snow flurries. Despite the limited lower uplift this morning the queues in the Ciste were OK with great skiing on the Ciste gullies, East Wall's (west facing).

After lunch we put the skins on and headed up to Cairngorms summit before some great off piste skiing down the back and beyond. As promised to Fi we then headed over to 'Windy Col' by the side of the Mess of Pottage to find some completely virgin powder slopes just below the cornices - not sure if she actualy realised where I meant!

There were sign of old avalanche debris from the collapse of the large overhung cornices just to the left of Opening Break on the Mess of Pottage. Otherwise the slopes appeared OK and the cornice collapse hadn't actualy triggered the lower slopes.

A quick slide in through the small cornice and a few test jumps and off we went - skiing! Fantastic powder skiing though the flat light and gusty winds (windy Col!) meant we didn't see or video as much as we hoped for...

At the moment the west facing slopes in Coire an t-Sneachda are a skiers paradise but a climbers hell! More details on Fi's blog here. See the latest YouTube skiing video below:

The HD version of the video can now be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RhFvmIRXvU

Another great ski day

Full details on Fi's blog here

I'll upload a video of the skiing down Coire Laogh Mor tomorrow once I replace the video clips I accidently deleted!

Video now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RhFvmIRXvU

A dynamite day at Cairngorm!

Literally a dynamite day as Cairngorm Mountain were blasting the slopes before opening the pistes to minimize the high avalanche risk! A lot of hard work and digging going on to get everything up and running safely. As there was still limited tickets and up uplift we skinned up under azure skies to Cairngorm's glittering summit cone.

The views across Scotland's snow clad summits were simply breathtaking as was our off piste freshy run back down the mountain. Lots of ski mountaineers out on the hill though we didn't see any climbers! See the full sized YouTube video above here