Guided Winter Climbing 1st March 2022

Turf Turf!

Hero Ice 27 Jan 2022

Dave's First winter climb for 30 years!

KMC Winter Mountaineering 16 Jan 2022

Accessing winter routes by abseil!

Winter Mountaineering, Climbing & Coaching (11 Jan 2022)

Winter Returns 3rd Jan 2022

Flake Chimney Right 22nd Dec 2021

Cairngorm Mixed Climbing Headcam View 22 Dec 2021

Winter Mountaineering 20 December 2021

Alpine on Cairngorm 18 December 2021

Winter mountaineering 13th Dec 2021

Early Winter on Central Ridge

Ramping Up Dodger Ramp!

Sunrise on Cairngorm - June 2021

Two November days guided winter climbing with Henry

A great two November days winter climbing and snowshoeing with Henry, long may the wintry weather continue! :-)

We're now running our winter skills and snowshoe courses and private guiding with free axe, crampons and snowshoe hire, if booked and run before Christmas!

If you too fancy a few days of bespoke and unique early, mid or even late late season off-piste skiing, snowshoeing, winter mountaineering or winter climbing adventures that are well away from the queues and crowds, booking details can be found on our website at https://www.talisman-activities.co.uk/winter-skills-courses under private guiding.

#cairngormnationalpark #cairngormmountain #visitaviemore #visitcairngorms #scotwinter #scottishwinterclimbing #snowshoeing #winterclimbing #wintermountaineering #winterskills

Winter returns and so do winter climbers!

A quick but brief return to winter bringing the hard mixed winter climbing routes into good condition however the buildup is still poor for the easier snow and ice routes and the snow gullies. It's to get a bit warmer over the next few days before the return of winter proper later next week!
Details of our winter courses can be found here as well as guided winter climbing here.

Poor viz but a good days winter climbing!

A wee pre-Christmas and birthday climb today! Not great viz and more precipitation than expected with a freezing level higher than a couple of days ago but still excellent hero snow ice climbing conditions on some routes. 

Nice to bump into George also enjoying the early season climbing conditions and to follow in Andy and Jonathan's footsteps on Wavelength!

A short video on Facebook showing how good the snow was here >>

Still plenty of availability on our 2019 winter skills courses!

Exploratory Winter Climbing access 5th Dec 2018

With a good frost over the past week it was time for an other early season winter climbing adventure with Scott to make access easier to some of the routes we've climbed over the past few years. It's always interesting to note the changes in the snow ice buildup throughout the winter season and in particular to find rap anchor point that wont be buried under metres of snow ice later in the season!!!

 I was last up this 300 metre gully line with clients in March 2018 and we had superb snow ice conditions from the Strath Nethy all the to Cnap Choire Spreidhe summit, see video here.

However today the buildup was very limited which made anchor selection easier as long as a you avoided the partially frozen shattered and loose rock. We traversed in to avoid the fist 150 metre of abseiling which would likely damage the ground with out it's thick mantle of snow ice.

The first anchor point on the terrace, I'd spotted last March was obvious, however the following anchor points are situated in overhanging caves which had been completely buried in thick snow ice last March and will need re-positioned later but at least we now have relatively easy access!!

After the third and final 50 metre abseil we headed back up before taking another more direct line to the summit on superb frozen snow and turf.

A short video can be seen here and it is worth comparing with last March's blog and March 2018's video here!