With more manageable westerly winds of less than 80 mph and an overnight freeze forecast for Monday night, Stuart, Dave and myself headed up Cairngorm for our planned snow-hole expedition.
As we battled the up the hill I was surprised how much snow loss there had been from the previous day and concerned that we might have an uncomfortable night in a collapsed dripping snow-hole!
Thankfully we arrived just in time to claim and remodel our snow cave for the night.
As the temperatures dropped and the snow firmed up the guys sculptured a lovely line of steps to lessen the discomforts and hazards of going for a night time call of nature without crampons, it worked well!!
There were a couple of other teams up for the night but once inside our dry icy frozen shelter it felt like we had the whole mountain to ourselves and we enjoyed a very comfortable night.
Today after breakfast we headed up to Cairngorm's gusty summit before heading back down, taking great care not to slip on any hard snow and water ice!
On our last day we avoided the 90 mph plus winds and had a more relaxed instructional day looking at micro navigation.
The good news is that winter returns over the next day or so and just in the nick of time!
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