Snow On Beinn a' Chaorainn

Ray with a snowy backdrop of the middle East ridge of Beinn a' Chaorainn

Today I was at the College with the Second Year students on their Hill Skills Module assessment. We wanted a good place for navigation mixed with steep ground. In the last 24 hours the colour of the hills changed from autumnal to decidedly wintry - the high tops above 700m have turned white. We headed for Beinn a' Chaorainn, not knowing how much snow we would encounter. The East ridge scramble in summer conditions would have been a great venue choice for today, but it was too wintery for the equipment we had with us so we headed up the southerly East ridge aiming for the 1049m top. The day seemed to be all about navigation, until we hit the snow at 700m, when the focus seems to shift towards throwing snowballs!

Lewis sporting his new bobble hat !

The snow line was at about 700m today

Lewis - where's that snowball going? Chris keeps out of the way.

The snow was soft and wet - perfect for a quality snowball. The ground was however also soft and decidedly unfrozen. The group did well today with their nav and are set up well to move onto their Summer ML course. Now the group are looking forward to their winter mountain biking and paddling. The most impressive lunch of the day goes again to Ray - Pepper Pasta and Chicken Kievs. The most inappropriate lunch item goes to Lewis for his Gobstoppers (although we all had one). Well done guys on a successful assessment - keep safe on those bikes and kayaks! How about taking up winter hill walking, or winter climbing?

A good day - Ray, Lewis, Lewis, Chris and Holly walking back