Giant icicles and more great skiing...!

Not a great fan of skiing at the weekends but conditions and visibility were forecast to be good on Sunday so we just had to go and put up with queuing! Great alpine downhill skiing throughout the mountain especially the White Lady's east wall and the Coronation wall :-)
Lovely and sunny this morning with several cm of silky fresh powder which was ideal skiing but not for driving. However the Cairngorm Mountain ski area was closed today (for staff training!) so we removed the 30 Kg 'Sword of Damocles' giant icicle from the house gutter instead. See the YouTube video here. We then had a good day checking out the hills and ice falls on our cross country skis.

A beautiful winters day

Last night it was well below minus 20 again in the Highlands. Today it was a sparkling powder and sun day with the Cairngorms having good visibility and great downhill skiing. The cross country ski trails were really good too with the skis gliding well on the cut and pisted tracks.

If anyone is interested in a day or two of skiing, winter skills instruction or snowholing before Christmas and the New Year please get in touch...

Surface hoar and pisted trails

With lows of below minus 20 in the Highlands the temperature have not risen much above freezing since last week. The snow is still unconsolidated and powdery in most areas and there is a high avalanche risk in places.
The Cairngorm Mountain ski area is open with a wide covering of powder snow and a high avalanche risk off-piste.
Away from the high tops the ice on many low level waterfalls and seepage lines on road cuttings is getting fatter :-)
At low level you can ski almost anywhere on Nordic touring kit, so we were out on the local cross-country trails yet again.
At Slochd the skis were gliding well on the already pisted upper loop. Today we conpleted the lower circuit and in contrast to Monday the skis were sliding well on the thick layer of surface hoar that's growing fast and likely to affect the future snow stability in the mountains...