Winter weekend

Last weekend winter came back to the Cairngorms and I was working on the Mountain Training Association winter weekend at Glenmore Lodge running 2 day's of workshops looking at the teaching of basic winter skills. Each day we had a discussion about the scope of the Winter Mountain Leader Award, painting a perfect picture and choosing an appropriate journey and the difference between this and instructing a skills program to make people independent winter walkers. Then we hit the hill to talk about what to teach where and how to structure sessions and maximise the impact of our demonstrations.

Both days we travelled up the ridge beside Coire an Lochain to near spot height 1083. On the first day we took the opportunity to get on some steep ground dropping in near the Twin Burns. On the second day we decided that this was a pointless risk as we could see fresh wind blown snow on the steep slope below us creating a potential avalanche hazard so we retreated the way we came in.

Saturday it dumped snow and vis was poor, sunday the wind had been bowing redistributing the snow into often deep drifts but the sky was blue!