Winter Skills In The Northern Cairngorms

Ryvoan Bothy

This weekend I'm at Glenmore Lodge working on the MC of S Winter Skills course. I'm with 6 students from Edinburgh Uni Hill Walking Club - Alex, Briony, Tonje, Stuart, Douglas and Justin. The weather and snow conditions were a little challenging today, so we took our time this morning looking at different websites on the computer to access snow, road access and weather knowledge. We used this to look at maps to come up with a safe journey and avtivity plan. After a discussion of suitable winter equipment we made our way out to start winterising their nav strategies. We eventually got to Ryvoan bothy, a little jealous of people easily ski touring each way - zipping past us.

Finding easy shears in the slab

We moved onto thinking about snow at our second venue of the day - above the Cas car park - and found some deep slab in a safe setting to investigate. The slab was deep, unconsolidated and had multiple layers, with some easy shearing. We looked at a few different types of snow analysis/pits that are popular and effective.

Digging into the slab to look for different layers and instabilities

An epic climb up a steep snow slope

We had a diversion from the snow science to look at how to climb/descend steep soft snow - and the answer is anything goes, and it's always a full body workout, if you can actually make it to the top!

Cutting steps

We found a great patch of neve for looking at kicking steps and cutting steps. The softer snow lying on the neve nearby proved to be perfect for the self belay and some arresting practice. We started with arresting techniques when you've lost your axe, and tomorrow I hope to find a patch to do a fuller axe arrest session. We'll put all this together tomorrow to do a larger journey around the Northern Corries, in the context of Winter Walking. The weather will be slightly more friendly, and the snow a little more consolidated.

Self belay

Arresting without an ice axe

My heart goes out to the friends and family of those in the Glencoe Avalanche today..