Winter fun in Scotland

Just back to a very wintry Snowdonia after 4 days up in Scotland. With a large Siberian air mass over the country I knew that it was a good time up North. So I drove up to the Cairngorms with my good friend Jamie on Thursday evening. After a cosy night in the van at the Cairngorm Ski Area car park we made our way into Corrie an t'Sneachda as it was getting light. The cliffs looked amazing and the weather was pretty calm. We climbed Crotched Gully and The Runnel - both covered in amazing snow/ice. Then to finish the day off we marched over the top of Cairngorm in a white out.





The next day we attempted to get up Creag Meghaidh but we got caught out in a fierce blizzard so retreated only to find the road completely covered - which made for an interesting drive to Fort William (especially as one of the rear brakes had seized!). We chilled out the next day as we were without transport and snowed in!

On Monday we made it half way up Aonach Mor on the Gondola then traversed round through very deep snow to its west face and climbed a very alpine style route in blissful solitude. It was quite hard work as the deep snow covered ice, frozen turf and cracks for gear. We topped out in the dark and navved down to the Gondola, where to our great fortune we managed to blag a ride down with staff, despite missing the last public Gondola by 2 hours. We earned our beers that night!



I'm really pleased with how my new La Sportiva Nepal Evo's performed - really comfy straight out of the box and they kept my feet toasty in spite of some pretty cold conditions. Money well spent!