Change of plans

My poor client for today had to cancel owing to a daughter with chickenpox but I was able to answer a last minute request for help from West Highland College for an instructor to do some winter skills work instead.

Knowing there was deep soft snow we decided to head to the CIC hut on ben Nevis making use of the deep trench that has been put in by climbers over the last few days. As we came out of the trees above Torlundy we stopped to make a huge pile of snow for later...

At the CIC we could see Mike heading for SW Ridge of the Douglas Boulder and Gaz on Waterfall Gully. We fed the snow buntings and put on the crampons to move around on patches of ice above the hut. On the walk out the team took the opportunity to dig in various snow drifts and when we reached our snow mound they built a shovel up shelter by tunnelling in to it and hollowing it out.

As we came off of the hill the sun was shining and the temperature mild.

No hill reports from me this weekend as I and my mountainbike are off to Wales for a bit of biking on the way to the BMC Climbing Coaching Conference at Plas Y Brenin.