Saturday 21 February 2009

Ski Mountaineering- Aviemore

Its been a wild windy day but we had a great day. We skinned up to the Ptarmigan Restaurant from Cairngorm car park this morning and really did not expect to get a lot further as the wind was very strong. While having coffee Cairngorm Mountain announced that the upper ski tows were closing due to wind, however Nick, Tony and I decided to carry on and we skinned towards the summit of Cairngorm and then enjoyed a wind blown but interesting ski descent to Loch Avon which is still frozen over. For climbers reading this Shelter Stone and Carn Etchachan are well and truly stripped!
We did some T- axe belays and crevasse rescue hauling systems, then skinned back up to the plateau, abseiled over some small cornices from bollards and generally practiced skills to prepare Tony and Nick for a Chamonix to Zermatt ski tour ( The "Haute Route", hut to hut trip). Finally we skied down the White Lady all teh way to the car park which while in soft snow was in good condition and slight freeze and a shower of new snow will bring conditions back in conditon quite quickly





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