The Cairngorms in Winter – II

I’m just back from a wild and wintery couple of days in the Cairngorms with Roger and Erik who were looking for some winter experience before tackling Mont Blanc later this year!  Two days of snow, sub-zero temperatures and a biting wind should certainly have provided that for them and I don’t think they felt short-changed in what the Scottish winter mountains threw at them!

Day 1 saw us circling Coire Cas from the ski car park, up to Spot Height 1141, then on to Cairn Gorm and down Sròn an Aonaich (thanks Erik for the most agreeable hot chocolate at the Ptarmigan)!  There was enough new snow since my last visit a fortnight ago to make progress tiring.  There were near white-out conditions on top of Cairn Gorm (1245m) where I managed to get the only photo of the whole weekend!

Day 2 was even more challenging.  We left the ski car park and headed SW to climb the westernmost encircling ridge of Coire an Lochain (Miadan Creag an Leth-choin).  We entered cloud at about 800m and from then on it was either near, or total, white-out conditions for the remainder of the day.  Keeping to the ridges to avoid the windslab-loaded slopes, we stumbled upon the summit of Cairn Lochan (1215m) before clawing our way eastwards along the summit plateau over Stob Coire an t-Sneachda (1176m) and Spot Height 1141 before descending back to the car.

It was not a day for the faint-hearted, but it did demonstrate just how challenging and inhospitable the mountains can be in winter.  The avalanche risk over the weekend was Considerable (3) with a lot of weakly-bonded windslab overlying previous snow.  If nothing else, the guys witnessed at first hand just how much the avalanche risk needs to influence where you go and what you do.  The information provided by the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (www.sais.gov.uk ) is invaluable in this regard and you ignore it at your peril.  Thanks again to them for the continuing great service!

I would love to have shown you some more photos from the trip but you’d have got bored with all the whiteness! 

Check out my plans for the coming season at: http://www.hillways.co.uk/summer/summer.htm