Introductory winter week

All the ice has fallen down but it's a great place to practice some abseiling skills!

The pass of Drumochter, the highest point on the British Rail network.

A nice little summit!

Cyril B ( above) is a French journalist and lives between London and Paris and while I know it's hard to understand, he has never been to wonderful Newtonmore, oh la la!!!

We could not get up to Cairngorm today at a reasonable time as the road was still blocked , but we had a great day on An Torc otherwise known as the Boar of Badenoch. We did some winter skills such as walking and self arrest with ice axes, avalanche awareness , belaying and anchoring on snow and so on. The A9 was closed for a while last week as an avalanche from Creag nan Ubhal blocked the South bound dual carriage way for a while. The debris are still there to see! We then visited a local crag in the hope of finding a remaining ice smear to climb on, but at road side altitudes any icicles that are left are thawing and crashing to the ground! We did some rope skills and Cyril is ready for his first winter climb tomorrow! Lets hope the staff at Cairngorm Mountain have dug out the road and are serving their outstanding hot chocolate drinks from their T bar Cafe! The SAIS N. Cairngorm blog indicates that there are positive things happening up there.