Alan Halewood: Wet and sweaty in the snow.

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Wet and sweaty in the snow.

Today Ken and I wanted to stretch our legs. All reports indicated that the turf was not frozen and the snow is still unconsolidated so we opted to go mountaineering. There are probably some rocky routes that are doable but I'm not psyched given the pretty poor nick at present.
We walked up to the west face of Aonach Mor in warm misty clag. There is plenty of snow above 600m but it is nicely insulating the soggy turf. There is a little ice which is forming at nights but it is detached, thin and unstable as it thaws off during the day. We wandered up to near Golden Oldy and picked a line that traversed around to take in the most interesting ground we could see through the murk- finishing up Gendarme Ridge. It was probably just below freezing on the plateau and above 1100m things were rimed up but even the wind blasted turf on the plateau wasn't really convincingly frozen yet. It was good to get out and we found some fun wee steps but it remains to be seen what the short to medium term conditions will be like. The soft snow means that it would need a really prolonged freeze to reach the turf beneath it.