Current climbing conditions!

A wander in on skis to have a look at the climbing conditions. Not many climbers about though voices could be heard from the Mess of Potage and two German or Swiss sounding climbers, who seemed to be climbing the approach of Fingers Ridge and onto the Broken Gully traverse, before abbing off!

All our winter condition photos are being added to our Winter Conditions 2016 Facebook Album here rather than the blog which just has a small selection, please like!

Generally there's still complete cover on the Cairngorm plateau and in the Northern Corries though off-piste the snow is becoming more crusty and not as nice for skiing.

In the popular climbing venues it's mainly soft deep snow, although thickish ice is developing in a few places such as Aladdin's Mirror Direct and in some of the easier Grade 2 gully lines which are almost banked out with snow.

The biggest cornices (Jacob's Ladder!) and deepest most recent cover is on NW aspects, which extend to the still rocky coire floor, in main gully lines.

There's much more of a rocky runout on on NE aspects and less of the recent snow buildup though the high NE and E gullies hold the older icier pre-New Year snow.

With a bit of a thaw and refreeze conditions could be good in the easier lines as long as it's not too much of a thaw and there's a good hard freeze afterwards?