Cairngorm Mountain

Coire Cas today

This weekend I was working for Glenmore Lodge on a Winter Skills course. My group was made up of Paul, Owen, Debbie, Calum, Guy and Anna - all from Dundee University Rucksack Club. Today we decided to head for the Fiacaill a Choire Chais up to the 1141m point, then Cairngorm summit.

Cairngorm Mountain today

Cairngorm Mountain was open for business today. There were lots of children and adults having fun skiing and boarding today, especially on the Ptarmigan bowl, and run from the Ptarmigan tow. I even saw people having fun on the Ptarmigan shred.

Coire an t-Sneachda today

Summit of Cairngorm today (1245m)

Ciste Mhearad

We headed for Ciste Mhearad, got our crampons on and worked on our footwork. We even found some vertical snow to climb (out the back of some fallen through snow holes). There were even several patches of ice to play with on our crampons. After all this the guys wanted to play so they were let loose exploring the other snow holes. We had a good explore and found a couple of larger ones.

This is inside one of the larger snow holes in Ciste Mhearad. You can see Debbie, Anna, Calum and Guy. There would be space for at least 3 to sleep or 4 at a squeeze.

Owen then came into the snow hole to join us. There was still space for Paul afterwards

1141m west of Cairngorm on 26th Feb 2012 from Max Hunter on Vimeo.

Well done guys for working hard on the 2 days - best wishes for your future mountaineering and climbing - tell me how it goes...

Northern Corries

Looking over at the northern corries from Loch Morlich this morning. Coire Cas in the centre.

This weekend I'm working at Glenmore Lodge working on a Winter Skills course for members of The Mountaineering Council of Scotland. My team represent the Dundee University Rucksack Club.

The top Cairngorm Mountain car park bottom left

Coire an Lochain today - great slab in the centre

We headed over to Coire an Lochan, shown above, which turned out to be a great venue for an introduction to winter skills for the team. The snow was firm initially in the morning, but with a slight rise in temperature during the day it became softer in the afternoon. There were lots of teams about developing nav skills, snow knowledge, footwork, cutting steps, stopping a slip, stopping a slide, crampon footwork, and going on journeys. As always great fun.

There weren't too many climbers around here today, but it was busy over west today on the Ben, where conditions would have been better in the morning.