Saturday Lara and I went out for lunch at the local pub to get out of the house (seem to be going to the pub lots but not drinking beer….. strange). After we went into town and went for a walk around Duthie Park, Lara is not yet fully recovered yet (as can only be expected!) we are still taking it easy. It was a lovely day, sun was out and pretty mild for this time of year.

Super mum with Ellis in her new pram – if you look closely you will see that the front wheel even has a disk brake! (the reason why I chose this one!)

We knew that our friend Gus was going to be there playing with his slack line, be rude not to have a go! I first slacklined in New Zealand with Ben nearly ten years ago but I had not done it for a while, the odd time here and there but really enjoyed it and decided I need to do it more often.

It felt really good for my ankle which I damaged the ligaments in a year ago (and is still not right), good for the strengthening, it is like tight rope walking but the tape is not so tight; it wobbles all over the place. Next time I will take a video which will show it better.

Above is Gus, he is obviously a lot better. We shall hopefully see more of him and his ‘skills’ will hopefully rub off onto me!

Today I went skiing with Andy and Monica, they kindly picked me up and drove me there and back so I could sleep if need be. We went to Aviemore and up into Corrie an Sneachda with the idea to climb Aladdins Couloir and back around again. A lot of the snow had gone from the area due to a massive thaw that had taken place over the last two days. We had to carry our skis up the first 20 minutes or so until there was enough snow to piece together a continuous route up.

Above – Andy is confident about his recent weight loss plan! We got into the Corrie and looked up to our planned route, Andy then realises he has forgotten his crampons…….. wuzzuck, oh well, he went a little way up to the couloir and decided it was too icy without crampons, we decided we would leave it for another day and whilst we thought of what to do we made a snow bollard. Below is Monica testing it out…. scary things.

I think it looks like a big willy, tee hee hee.

We decided we would go up the goat track and then around the rim of the corrie. The weather was not amazing and very windy so we decided to go at least a little further. We started up the goat track and came across some gear some climbers had dropped above us, me being the nice bloke I am, ran up to them (they were only just starting the route) and passed it back to them. Off I went up the Goat track feeling like my good deed for the day had been done.

This is a skis off job and gets fairly steep near the top, so it definitely had some interest. The top was really windy, especially with skis on, we were being blown all over the place, we quickly got on our way. Was a busy day up there with a lot of climbers around, we skied our way down and then back into Corrie Cas and onto the ski resort runs for some really good conditions for the pistes all things considered.

A good fun day, it was great to be back out in the hills and next time Andy hopefully wont forget his crampons! Hopefully the snow will remain for at least another month as I know Lara is desperate to ski at least once this year!